SharpLink (Nasdaq: SBET) pulled in 449 ETH in staking rewards for the week ending July 5, 2026. That brings the company’s total Ethereum stash to 887,174 ETH, a pile worth well over $2 billion at current prices and growing larger every single week.
Here’s the thing about SharpLink: it’s essentially turned itself into a publicly traded Ethereum staking machine. And unlike buying an ETH ETF, this one actually generates yield.
The numbers behind the staking engine Since launching its Ethereum-focused treasury strategy on June 2, 2025, SharpLink has accumulated 22,991 ETH purely from staking rewards. That’s ETH earned just by locking up existing holdings and validating transactions on the network.
The company stakes nearly 100% of its ETH through institutional partners Liquid Collective and Figment. A portion of the company’s assets has also been deployed to Linea, an Ethereum Layer 2 network, as part of a broader yield diversification strategy.
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The 449 ETH earned this week translates to roughly a 2.6% annualized yield on the total holdings, which tracks closely with typical Ethereum staking returns.
From gaming company to Ethereum treasury vehicle If you’re wondering how a company called “SharpLink Gaming” ended up holding nearly 900,000 ETH, the answer is a dramatic corporate pivot. The company rebranded in February 2026 to ditch the gaming association entirely and lean fully into its identity as an Ethereum treasury company.
The playbook should look familiar. It’s the same strategy MicroStrategy pioneered with Bitcoin, just applied to Ethereum with an added twist: staking yield. While MicroStrategy’s Bitcoin sits in cold storage generating zero passive income, SharpLink’s ETH actively earns rewards by participating in network validation.
That distinction matters. Traditional ETH exchange-traded products, including spot ETH ETFs, don’t offer staking rewards to holders due to regulatory constraints. SharpLink has positioned itself as the workaround: buy the stock, get exposure to ETH plus the yield that ETFs can’t touch.
The market has noticed. Institutional ownership climbed to 46% by late 2025. The Russell index inclusion in June 2026, when SharpLink was added to both the Russell 2000 and Russell 3000, likely accelerated that institutional buying as index funds were forced to pick up shares.
The discount problem investors should understand SharpLink shares have displayed significant volatility and frequently trade at a discount to the company’s net asset value calculated from its ETH holdings. In simple terms: if you add up all the ETH SharpLink owns and multiply by the current ETH price, the number you get is higher than what the stock market says the company is worth.
Because SharpLink’s value is almost entirely tied to ETH’s price, the stock amplifies Ethereum’s moves. When ETH drops 5%, SBET might drop 7% or 8% as the discount widens.
The 22,991 ETH in cumulative staking rewards since launch is real yield generated from a real on-chain activity. For investors weighing SBET against alternatives, the calculus comes down to whether the staking yield premium, roughly 2-3% annually, compensates for the risks of holding a small-cap equity instead of the underlying asset directly.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
DOGE Global Debit CardFollowing the merger of House of Doge and Brag House Holdings completed last week, the former became the core operating business of the combined company.
In its mid-2026 Shareholder letter released on July 7, the company said access to public markets will help expand its Dogecoin payments infrastructure, grow its sports investments and accelerate tokenization initiatives.
It plans to launch global Dogecoin debit card and blockchain-based fan engagement initiatives.
House of Doge highlighted several recent milestones, including partnerships with Paxos and MoonPay.
The company also launched the beta version of “Such,” its direct-to-consumer mobile application designed as a testing ground for future digital banking and payments products before they are rolled out to enterprise partners.
Beyond payments, House of Doge said it is building a multi-club sports ownership portfolio through investments in Italy’s Milano Hockey Club, Switzerland’s HC Sierre and Italian football club U.S. Triestina Calcio 1918.
Network Activity, Whale MovementsThe corporate update comes amidst on-chain metrics pointing to rising Dogecoin activity.
In an X post on July 5, crypto chart analyst Ali Martinez said DOGE’s network activity climbed to nearly 50,000 active addresses, suggesting growing user participation.
At the same time, Whale Alert reported, on July 7, a transfer of nearly 4 billion DOGE, worth about $300 million, from Binance to an unknown wallet.
This potentially signals large-scale accumulation or custody movement.
From a technical perspective, trader Stefan, in an X post on July 8, said Dogecoin remains in a broader downtrend characterized by lower highs and lower lows.
He identified the $0.047 area as a key liquidity zone that could serve as a potential local bottom.
A decisive break above $0.11 would invalidate the current bearish structure.
Price Action: Over the past month, Dogecoin is down 17%.
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Dogecoin is once again approaching the long-term support zone that analysts have historically identified as a prime opportunity during previous market cycles. Speculation is mounting that if DOGE can maintain its grip on this crucial area and break its downtrend, the potential for a much stronger rally heading into 2026 remains alive. Dogecoin, which originally started as an internet meme, continues to hold a prominent spot among meme coins thanks to its massive market capitalization.
Long-term cycle patterns come into focusTrader Tardigrade has drawn attention to Dogecoin’s ongoing test of a rising, long-term trendline on the monthly chart, linking the lows and breakout points of past cycles. According to his analysis, a similar price structure has played out ahead of major expansion phases in the past.
Trader Tardigrade observes that Dogecoin is tracking an expanding cycle pattern, noting that after major surges between 2017 and 2020, 2026 stands out as the next potential window for a significant move.
Historical charts reveal that each cycle’s major reaction emerged near this upward trendline. As a result, the current price area carries weight not just for the short term but also for chart structure over a multi-year timeframe.
If buyers can defend this trendline, a new bullish chapter for Dogecoin could be on the horizon. However, this scenario is still unconfirmed; a clearer breakout, surging trading volumes, and broader demand across the meme coin sector would be needed to solidify the outlook.
Support zone gains prominence on weekly chartMikybullCrypto, another notable analyst, notes that Dogecoin has returned to a critical weekly support band after trending lower from its 2024 high. This region has historically served as a base during earlier attempts to recover, coinciding with the lower boundary of key trading ranges.
MikybullCrypto suggests that if DOGE can hold this support, the chart indicates a potential structure for more than tenfold returns, potentially targeting the $0.70 area near previous cycle peaks or even higher.
The Relative Strength Index (RSI), a momentum indicator, is also hovering near the lower band, signaling an effort to emerge from a period of weakness. Should RSI start turning upward more decisively, it would lend extra credence to DOGE’s recovery thesis.
Glossary: The RSI is a technical indicator that measures the speed and strength of price movements. Low readings typically point to weak momentum, while an upswing suggests growing buying interest.
Nevertheless, the current setup is still in its early stages. For a convincing Dogecoin recovery, the price must overcome the descending trendline and recapture higher resistance levels. Continued defense of support keeps both the 2026 cycle breakout scenario and prospects for a long-term rally on the table for now.
Disclaimer: The information contained in this article does not constitute investment advice. Investors should be aware that cryptocurrencies carry high volatility and therefore risk, and should conduct their own research.
Dogecoin (DOGE) edges lower toward support at $0.07 at the time of writing on Wednesday. The meme coin reflects a broader sell-off in the crypto market, primarily attributed to uncertainty over tensions in the Middle East.
US and Iran exchange fire as risk-off sentiment persistsIran launched attacks on American military bases in the Middle East on Wednesday in retaliation for attacks by the United States (US) on several places in Iran. The US has also reinstated sanctions on Iran’s Oil sales, saying that the developments were in response to Iranian attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
The latest wave of attacks has sparked renewed concerns across global markets over a potential escalation in the US-Iran conflict, which could introduce heightened volatility and risk-off sentiment.
As tensions in the Middle East remain high, sentiment in the crypto market deteriorated. At 20, within the Extreme Fear territory, the crypto Fear & Greed Index indicates that appetite for risk assets is significantly suppressed.
Crypto Fear & Greed Index | Source: AlternativeDogecoin outlook stays weak despite returning retail interestDogecoin derivatives exhibit mild stability, with perpetual futures Open Interest (OI) rising to 14.24 billion DOGE on Wednesday, from 13.83 billion DOGE the previous day. CoinGlass data highlights a broad increase from the 12.01 billion DOGE recorded on June 12, affirming a long-term investor conviction in Dogecoin’s outlook despite persistent drawdowns.
DOGE Futures OI | Source: CoinGlassPrice analysis: Dogecoin risks extending lossesDogecoin maintains a clear bearish near-term tone as price holds beneath the 50-day, 100-day and 200-day Moving Average Exponentials (EMAs) at $0.08, $0.09 and $0.11, respectively. The pair tracks a downward parallel channel, trading below its top boundary at $0.08, while the Relative Strength Index (RSI) near 31 stays close to neutral territory after recovering from oversold levels, and the Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) histogram, mildly positive, hints at tentative but capped upside momentum within the broader downtrend.
DOGE/USDT daily chartOn the topside, initial resistance lies at the channel top near $0.08, with the 100-day EMA at $0.09 and the 200-day EMA at $0.11 reinforcing a dense overhead supply zone that would need to be reclaimed to ease selling pressure. On the flip side, the next notable support aligns with the lower boundary of the descending channel around $0.05, where buyers may attempt to defend the broader structure if the current slide extends.
(The technical analysis of this story was written with the help of an AI tool. Know more.)
Open Interest, funding rate FAQs Higher Open Interest is associated with higher liquidity and new capital inflow to the market. This is considered the equivalent of increase in efficiency and the ongoing trend continues. When Open Interest decreases, it is considered a sign of liquidation in the market, investors are leaving and the overall demand for an asset is on a decline, fueling a bearish sentiment among investors.
Funding fees bridge the difference between spot prices and prices of futures contracts of an asset by increasing liquidation risks faced by traders. A consistently high and positive funding rate implies there is a bullish sentiment among market participants and there is an expectation of a price hike. A consistently negative funding rate for an asset implies a bearish sentiment, indicating that traders expect the cryptocurrency’s price to fall and a bearish trend reversal is likely to occur.
Bitcoin gave up its gains from the previous two sessions as escalating geopolitical tensions between the U.S. and Iran sparked a broader risk-off move across cryptocurrency markets.
Notable Statistics:
Coinglass data shows 128,517 traders were liquidated in the past 24 hours for $369.27 million. SoSoValue data shows net inflows of $21.4 million from spot Bitcoin ETFs on Tuesday. Spot Ethereum ETFs saw net inflows of $26.9 million. In the past 24 hours, top losers include Jupiter, Aerodrome Finance and Pi. Notable Developments:
Trader Notes:
Analyst Kevin expects Bitcoin to sweep long liquidity between current levels and $44,000 during the third phase of the bear market.
He plans to aggressively accumulate BTC if leveraged long positions are liquidated and also take additional profits on the short position initiated at $79,000.
Trader KillaXBT says sentiment between bulls and bears remains surprisingly balanced.
He believes bears have roughly two months to drive Bitcoin lower in line with the four-year cycle.
This will potentially create what he sees as the final opportunity to buy BTC in the $50,000 range before a longer-term recovery.
Trader Jelle noted Bitcoin has formed a weekly bullish divergence on both the regular RSI and stochastic RSI, with the latter beginning to turn higher.
These are signs that selling pressure is weakening and the setup reinforces the strategy of continuing to dollar-cost average into Bitcoin while accumulating more.
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Input Output Global (IOG) CEO Charles Hoskinson has criticized Ethereum’s staking mechanism, arguing that Cardano provides a better alternative.
In a recent commentary, Hoskinson took aim at several aspects of Ethereum’s proof-of-stake (PoS) architecture, particularly its staking design. According to him, Ethereum forces users to navigate unnecessary fund lockups, slashing risks, bonding periods, with liquid staking solutions built around derivative assets such as Lido.
“You have to lock your funds, and have slashing and bonding, and all this garbage, and create synthetic assets like Lido,” Hoskinson said.
He contrasted Ethereum’s approach with Cardano’s staking model, emphasizing that Cardano does not require users to lock their assets to earn staking rewards.
“There’s no locking in Cardano,” Hoskinson said.
Ethereum and Cardano Take Different Approaches to Staking Although Ethereum and Cardano both rely on the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) mechanism to secure their networks, they implement staking in fundamentally different ways.
Ethereum requires validators to stake 32 ETH to operate a validator node. The network also incorporates slashing penalties to discourage malicious behavior and uses withdrawal queues that can delay access to staked funds.
Since Ethereum staking traditionally involves locking assets while awaiting withdrawals, many investors have turned to liquid staking platforms such as Lido. These services issue derivative tokens that represent staked ETH, allowing users to trade or deploy those assets across decentralized finance (DeFi) applications while the underlying ETH remains staked.
Conversely, Cardano employs a native liquid staking model that allows ADA holders to delegate their tokens without locking their funds. Users retain full control of their ADA throughout the staking process and can spend or transfer their holdings at any time while continuing to earn rewards through Cardano’s Ouroboros consensus mechanism.
In Hoskinson’s view, this design eliminates unnecessary complexity while making staking more accessible to everyday users.
Ethereum EUTXO Dispute Hoskinson’s remarks come shortly after he accused Ethereum of borrowing key ideas from Cardano without acknowledging their origin.
As previously reported, he criticized an Ethereum Foundation proposal that seeks to introduce native UTXO-style payments through “one-shot” objects. The proposal aims to reduce Ethereum’s state bloat by up to 99.8%, while preserving the network’s existing account-based architecture.
According to Hoskinson, the proposal replicates Cardano’s Extended UTXO (EUTXO) model, which has been a core component of the blockchain since its launch. He argued that Ethereum adopted concepts pioneered by Cardano over 10 years ago without giving the project proper credit.
Hoskinson Expects More Cardano Innovations to Influence Ethereum Looking ahead, Hoskinson suggested that Ethereum could eventually adopt additional innovations pioneered by Cardano.
He predicted that the network may embrace Cardano’s on-chain governance framework, Ouroboros consensus protocol, and treasury system as it continues evolving its architecture.
His latest comments extend a long-running rivalry between the two leading Proof-of-Stake blockchains, with Hoskinson continuing to position Cardano’s staking design and broader architecture as more efficient, accessible, and sustainable than Ethereum’s current model.
DisClamier: This content is informational and should not be considered financial advice. The views expressed in this article may include the author's personal opinions and do not reflect The Crypto Basic opinion. Readers are encouraged to do thorough research before making any investment decisions. The Crypto Basic is not responsible for any financial losses.
Cardano (ADA) saw a weak performance over the past 24 hours, trading around $0.17 and dropping approximately 4.84% during the day. The token’s price fluctuated between $0.17 and $0.18, with its market cap holding at around $6.35 billion and daily trading volume at $339 million. This latest decline comes directly after one of the most robust short-term rallies Cardano has experienced in recent weeks.
Cardano pauses after sharp weekly rallyMarket analyst Daan Crypto Trades noted Cardano’s strong performance last week, outperforming many major crypto assets. While this signals a possible gradual return of risk appetite in the altcoin market, analysts emphasize that one wave of gains is not enough to establish a sustained upward trend.
Cardano emerged as a leading large-cap altcoin last week, but experts stress that this move requires support from another upward leg to be considered sustainable growth.
The current pullback is seen as a natural breather following the sharp rebound from June lows. If ADA stabilizes here and regains upward momentum, the first recovery zone is expected between $0.19 and $0.20. A break above that range could refocus investor attention toward the $0.22 and higher levels.
RSI divergence keeps recovery hopes aliveTechnically, a key signal highlighted by Token Talk was positive divergence on the ADA chart: while price formed a new low, the Relative Strength Index (RSI) produced a higher low. This pattern often points to waning downside momentum, even if prices remain under pressure.
Glossary: RSI is a technical indicator that measures the speed and strength of price movements. Positive divergence means the indicator does not confirm a new price low, suggesting selling momentum may be fading.
Nonetheless, analysts caution that the market must confirm this signal. For ADA to maintain strength, it is seen as crucial for the price to hold above $0.1850. If this level is retained, a retest of $0.22 and potentially $0.25 could follow in the near term.
On-chain data indicates surge in walletsThe technical outlook gains some support from on-chain metrics. According to BeInCrypto, citing Santiment data, 14,783 new ADA wallets with a non-zero balance have been created since the June bottom. Santiment is recognized as a leading analytics platform tracking on-chain activity and user behavior in the crypto market.
The data set also reveals ADA surged approximately 33% last week. The rise in new wallets suggests renewed interest, even as prices remain relatively subdued, indicating that the latest pullback may simply be a pause within a larger recovery attempt.
The $0.22-$0.25 range identified as key thresholdVal Me notes that after clearing equal lows, ADA may be approaching a buying zone, but a safer structure will only emerge if the $0.22 level is reclaimed and the $0.22-$0.25 band holds as support. This distinction is important: reacting from the bottom is not the same as converting the main resistance region into a new base.
LevelSignificance$0.17First short-term support$0.19–$0.20Initial recovery zone$0.22Critical breakout threshold$0.22–$0.25Confirmation range for a stronger structure$0.155 and $0.14Supports tracked in a downside scenarioFor ADA to regain short-term strength, it first needs to stabilize above $0.17, then reclaim the $0.19–$0.20 zone. More meaningful structural improvement will be tested in the $0.22–$0.25 range.
The short-term outlook for Cardano remains cautiously optimistic. However, to confirm a broader recovery, ADA needs to steadily surpass multiple resistance barriers. A decisive break above $0.25 would make the $0.30 target increasingly realistic.
Disclaimer: The information contained in this article does not constitute investment advice. Investors should be aware that cryptocurrencies carry high volatility and therefore risk, and should conduct their own research.
Cardano (ADA) founder Charles Hoskinson made noteworthy statements regarding the scalability roadmap for the Cardano ecosystem. Hoskinson stated that by the end of the year, Cardano will be 60 times faster than its current state.
Hoskinson stated that Cardano aims for nearly unlimited scalability at the decentralized application level with its Hydra technology, and that other networks can be included in the ADA ecosystem through partner chain structures. Hoskinson said, “We will be 60 times faster by the end of the year. With Hydra, we have a great strategy for infinite scalability at the dApp level, and we can invite all these other networks into the ecosystem through partner chains.”
Hoskinson, also commenting on Ethereum’s recent interest in the UTXO model, argued that the Ethereum ecosystem is beginning to adopt approaches that Cardano has been working on since 2016. Hoskinson stated that the ADA community has overcome significant technical challenges over many years to properly implement this structure.
Hoskinson also argued that Cardano wasn’t being given enough credit regarding Ethereum’s UTXO orientation. The ADA founder stated, “We invented the infrastructure for this. Instead of saying ‘We should be like Cardano’ and giving credit to us, they don’t mention it at all. You can’t say ADA on Ethereum.”
Hoskinson also touched upon the cryptocurrency market’s performance in 2025, arguing that US-originated developments disrupted the market cycle. According to Hoskinson, without the US influence, the crypto market could have followed a more normal cycle, and an altcoin season could have occurred in 2025.
*This is not investment advice.
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Hoskinson argues Cardano's years of research deserve recognition as Ethereum explores similar technical approaches.
Charles Hoskinson has accused Ethereum of adopting ideas pioneered by Cardano without acknowledgment.
The Cardano co-founder made the claim following a proposal by Ethereum researcher Toni Wahrstätter to bring native UTXOs to the network as a way of cutting long-term state storage for payment transactions.
Ethereum Is Revisiting Cardano’s Work According to Hoskinson, Wahrstätter’s research closely mirrors concepts Cardano has been developing since its launch.
“It’s literally a crime in the Ethereum inner circle to mention Cardano,” he wrote on X. “EUTXO is the biggest innovation of the smart contract world and Ethereum cannot mention it as they literally try to copy it.”
Wahrstätter’s proposal describes a payment model that stores only a small “spent” marker in Ethereum’s state while keeping the rest of the payment data in blockchain history. According to the research, this approach could reduce the permanent state required for payment workloads by as much as 99.8% without abandoning Ethereum’s account-based architecture.
The proposal borrows the one-time payment structure used by Bitcoin’s UTXO model while allowing Ethereum accounts and smart contracts to keep on operating. It also relies on the proposed EIP-8141 transaction framework to let users spend UTXOs without first holding ETH for gas fees.
Hoskinson followed up his post on X with a livestream on the same platform, where he read a tweet by Wahrstätter announcing the proposal and pointed out that it made no reference to Cardano despite his network spending years solving many of the engineering problems that Ethereum is now exploring.
“For ten years, we’ve worked on extended UTXO, smart contracts on UTXO,” he said. “We wrote a paper called Chimeric Ledgers to show how to run these two systems in parallel.”
He argued that Ethereum developers had in the past dismissed UTXO-based smart contracts as impractical before now putting similar ideas on their long-term roadmap.
You may also like: Staking Surge Tightens Supply, But Negative Sentiment Still Dominates Ethereum Ethereum Execs Launch Non-Profit to Accelerate Institutional Adoption Bitmine Buys Another 27,000 ETH Despite Market Slump, Nears 5% of Ethereum Supply Long-Running Rivalry Returns to the Spotlight During the livestream, Hoskinson expanded his criticism beyond Wahrstätter’s proposal, claiming that Ethereum has been regularly adopting ideas after dismissing them when they first appeared on Cardano.
Some of the areas he claimed such behavior had happened in included Cardano’s governance system and treasury model, which he said the Ethereum Foundation had been forced to drift toward after losing staff and money.
He also suggested that Ethereum would look to revisit Cardano’s work on privacy and post-quantum cryptography through IOHK’s privacy-focused blockchain project, Midnight, as well as its early embrace of formal verification tools like Lean. According to him, Ethereum will eventually adopt both without acknowledgment as well.
This is not the first time Hoskinson has used a livestream to vent about how he or Cardano is being treated. In June, he announced plans to move the Cardano community away from X and onto Discord, saying the social platform had become dominated by hostility and personal attacks. However, he said that he would keep using X for livestream broadcasts, the exact same format he used today to make his case against Ethereum.
Data from @SantimentData shows that $USDT on Ethereum recorded a $5.03 billion net outflow from exchanges on July 8, the largest single-day withdrawal the network has ever seen. The previous record was a $4.43 billion outflow on June 19, 2022. According to Santiment, the move reflects large wallets shifting stablecoin liquidity into self-custody, DeFi protocols, or OTC desks. In other words, a significant pool of ready-to-trade dollar liquidity just left centralized exchanges.
Santiment also flagged that USDT's network realized profit and loss hit a five-month high of $2.92 million on the same day, driven largely by the sheer volume of tokens moving at once rather than any meaningful change in USDT's value. For context, this kind of signal can cut both ways: less stablecoin liquidity on exchanges may reduce immediate dip-buying power and put short-term pressure on $BTC and altcoins, but if the capital is being repositioned rather than exiting crypto entirely, it could rotate back in once confidence improves.
A Burn That Complicates the Picture The outflow landed a day after a separate but related development. According to CryptoQuant, Tether burned $2.5 billion worth of $USDT on the Ethereum network on July 7, marking its largest single burn since February 2026. The burn reduced the circulating supply by about 1.3% and was driven by large customer redemptions rather than a strategic move to cut supply, with the USDT peg remaining stable around $1.00.
A large Tether burn can reflect redemptions, treasury management, or cross-chain rebalancing and is not, on its own, enough to call the move bearish. The important part is the timing: the burn came while aggregate stablecoin supply was falling and Binance's Tron-based USDT liquidity was also shrinking. Binance's USDT balance on TRON fell to about $806 million in July, dropping below $1 billion for the first time in months. The macro backdrop added another layer: Bitcoin fell sharply from above $64,000 to near $62,000 between July 7 and 8, driven by geopolitical tensions after Iran fired on commercial vessels and the U.S. retaliated.
Dry Powder or an Exit? The broader stablecoin picture urges caution. Active stablecoin addresses fell 36.2% and average daily transfer volume dropped 47.5% over the past 30 days, on-chain data shows. Falling aggregate stablecoin capitalization, Binance's Tron reserve moving below $1 billion, and one of the largest Ethereum USDT burns in months all point to weaker liquidity conditions unless new minting or exchange inflows reverse the trend.
Whether the $5 billion outflow represents dry powder waiting to be deployed or capital heading for the exit remains the key question for traders to watch in the days ahead.
Sources:
Coinpedia: Tether Sees Historic $5B Exchange Outflow
Coindoo: Stablecoin Supply Tightens as Tether Burns $2.5B USDT
CoinReporter: Tether USDT Supply Contracts Across Ethereum and TRON Networks
BNB Chain is developing a new layer-1 blockchain for high-frequency trading and autonomous AI agents, with a mainnet launch targeted for early 2027.The network aims to process over 100,000 transactions per second by streaming them directly, eliminating public queues to make trades faster and more secure.The project focuses on execution-layer optimizations like just-in-time compilation to achieve speeds comparable to centralized exchanges.BNB Chain is developing a new layer-1 blockchain built for high-frequency trading and autonomous AI agents, with a public testnet targeted for the end of 2026 and mainnet planned for early 2027.
The chain will run alongside the existing BNB Chain ecosystem rather than replace it. BNB Smart Chain holds roughly $5 billion in total value locked. The goal is to give self-custodied traders execution speeds closer to those of centralized exchanges.
The roadmap targets transaction preconfirmations under 50 milliseconds, throughput above 100,000 transactions per second and sub-second block finality.
It removes the public mempool, streaming transactions directly to the block leader. BNB Chain says the design lowers latency and prevents front-running by eliminating the public queue where pending trades are visible.
The plans come as the crypto industry builds infrastructure for autonomous AI agents that can trade, make payments and execute transactions without constant human oversight.
Coinbase last month introduced accounts designed for AI agents, while stablecoins are gaining traction as a payment rail for autonomous software.
BNB Chain has already lifted performance on BNB Smart Chain. During the first half of 2026, block times fell to 450 milliseconds from 750, while benchmark throughput rose to about 5,200 transactions per second from roughly 2,800.
David Z, BNB Chain's chief technical officer, told CoinDesk the next phase focuses on execution rather than consensus.
"All smart contracts today need optimization directly at the execution layer," he said. "The chains got fast at consensus and storage, but the execution engine itself still works like it's translating sentence by sentence."
The new network will use execution-layer techniques such as just-in-time compilation, which compiles code as it runs, and strength reduction, which swaps expensive calculations for simpler ones.
The roadmap also reserves blockspace for services such as oracles, liquidations and cross-chain bridges, alongside native privacy, account abstraction, gas sponsorship, transaction batching, scheduled execution and passkey signing.
BNB Chain is separately researching quantum-resistant security. The team said it aims to let users adopt quantum-safe protection without changing wallet addresses or disrupting existing applications, work that remains at the research stage.
AI Disclaimer: Parts of this article were generated with the assistance from AI tools and reviewed by our editorial team to ensure accuracy and adherence to our standards. For more information, see CoinDesk's full AI Policy.
BNB Chain is making a deliberate bet that the future of layer 1 blockchains looks a lot more like an AI platform than a traditional smart contract network. The project has outlined plans stretching to 2027 that would deeply integrate artificial intelligence capabilities into its core infrastructure.
The move signals that BNB Chain sees AI not as a marketing buzzword to slap onto an existing product, but as a fundamental architectural decision for what comes next.
What the roadmap looks like The 2027 plan positions BNB Chain’s layer 1 as purpose-built for AI workloads. Think of it less as a blockchain that happens to support AI projects, and more as infrastructure designed from the ground up to handle the specific demands that AI applications create.
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That distinction matters. Most chains today treat AI integrations as an add-on layer. Building it into the base layer means performance optimizations, data availability features, and consensus mechanisms can all be tailored for AI-native use cases.
BNB Chain has been inching in this direction for a while. This roadmap formalizes the trajectory and puts a timeline on it.
Why this matters for the broader market The AI-crypto intersection has become one of the most crowded narratives in the industry. Dozens of projects are chasing some version of “decentralized AI” or “AI-powered blockchain.” What makes BNB Chain’s play different is scale. As one of the largest layer 1 ecosystems by user activity and transaction volume, its architectural choices carry weight that smaller AI-focused chains simply can’t match.
Here’s the thing: a multi-year roadmap is a double-edged sword. It shows strategic commitment, which developers and institutional partners want to see. But 2027 is a long way off in crypto years. The competitive landscape for AI-blockchain infrastructure could look completely different by then.
For investors watching BNB, the key question is execution speed. Roadmaps are easy. Shipping production-ready AI infrastructure that developers actually adopt is considerably harder. The chains that win the AI narrative will be the ones that attract real builder activity, not just whitepaper promises.
Worth watching: whether this announcement accelerates developer migration toward BNB Chain’s ecosystem, and whether competing layer 1s respond with their own AI-native pivots. When the third-largest smart contract platform makes a strategic bet this explicit, the rest of the industry tends to take notes.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Estefano Gomez. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
BNB Chain is building a new Layer-1 blockchain to support various use cases beyond existing ones, including trading systems powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI).
BNB Chain designs a high-performance blockchainBNB Chain’s first half (H1) of the year report has unveiled a new product suite, including the development of a high-performance blockchain. The blockchain will be capable of supporting more than 100,000 transactions per second (TPS) through optimized consensus and parallel execution.
The blockchain developer aims for an ambitious transaction pre-confirmation time of less than 50 milliseconds (ms), a block finality of less than one second, and no public mempool. This means that transactions will be routed directly to the block leader, significantly cutting latency and blocking front-running by design.
In addition to supporting agentic trading powered by AI, the new protocol achieves native privacy, including confidential transactions and selective disclosure for compliance.
BNB Chain stated in a press release on Wednesday that “the goal is to achieve Web2-grade user experience (UX) natively” through transaction batching, scheduled execution, pass key signing and access key control.
"We plan to ship it on testnet by the end of 2026, with mainnet release following in early 2027,” BNB Chain outlined.
From protocol to productIn H1, BNB Chain successfully rolled out the BNB Agent Studio and BNB Agent SDK, leveraging integrations with AWS Bedrock AgentCore and LLM gateways to facilitate autonomous on-chain agent deployment, an important step toward scalable, AI-powered blockchain applications.
On the payment infrastructure, BNB Chain enhanced the Middleware Payment Protocol (MPP), prioritizing seamless end-to-end integration and driving adoption through strategic partnerships. This has strengthened BNB Chain’s position in the evolving blockchain payments ecosystem.
The network also focused on institutional privacy through research and the drafting of key frameworks. Apart from the new Layer-1, BNB Chain developers announced that they are committed to increasing the transaction throughput on the BSC chain to twice the current level, with a long-term goal of scaling it up to 10 times.
“Gas fee structures will be refined to reduce entry costs for both Web2 and Web3 enterprises, a prerequisite for mass adoption,” the BNB Chain press release added.
BNB Chain is doubling down on testing and evaluating solutions for quantum-resistantecurity across protocol features. Data protection is emerging as a primary concern, since attackers can access currently encrypted data and decrypt it later as quantum computers catch up.
The native token, BNB, remains under pressure, trading at $562 at the time of writing. This marks three consecutive days of declines and mirrors a broader crypto market sell-off.
Bitcoin, altcoins, stablecoins FAQs Bitcoin is the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, a virtual currency designed to serve as money. This form of payment cannot be controlled by any one person, group, or entity, which eliminates the need for third-party participation during financial transactions.
Altcoins are any cryptocurrency apart from Bitcoin, but some also regard Ethereum as a non-altcoin because it is from these two cryptocurrencies that forking happens. If this is true, then Litecoin is the first altcoin, forked from the Bitcoin protocol and, therefore, an “improved” version of it.
Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies designed to have a stable price, with their value backed by a reserve of the asset it represents. To achieve this, the value of any one stablecoin is pegged to a commodity or financial instrument, such as the US Dollar (USD), with its supply regulated by an algorithm or demand. The main goal of stablecoins is to provide an on/off-ramp for investors willing to trade and invest in cryptocurrencies. Stablecoins also allow investors to store value since cryptocurrencies, in general, are subject to volatility.
Bitcoin dominance is the ratio of Bitcoin's market capitalization to the total market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies combined. It provides a clear picture of Bitcoin’s interest among investors. A high BTC dominance typically happens before and during a bull run, in which investors resort to investing in relatively stable and high market capitalization cryptocurrency like Bitcoin. A drop in BTC dominance usually means that investors are moving their capital and/or profits to altcoins in a quest for higher returns, which usually triggers an explosion of altcoin rallies.
BNB Chain's new L1 removes the mempool and targets sub-50ms preconfirmation, built for AI agents as chains race for agent trading tools.
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BNB Chain is building a new Layer 1 for agentic and high-frequency trading, targeting sub-50-millisecond transaction preconfirmation, no public mempool, and exchange-like execution without custodial risk. The chain will run alongside BNB Smart Chain, opBNB, and Greenfield, with testnet planned for late 2026 and mainnet in early 2027.
What's the Scoop?The Agentic Trading Chain: BNB Chain shared its H2 2026 technical roadmap with The Block, outlining a fourth chain designed for low-latency onchain execution. The new L1 targets more than 100,000 transactions per second and sub-one-second block finality. BNB Chain is not claiming it can beat co-located HFT on centralized exchanges; the pitch is that most users and agents can get a faster, CEX-like trading experience without handing over custody.No Public Mempool: TxStream routes transactions directly to the block leader instead of exposing them in a public mempool, reducing the window for sandwich attacks. Block leaders rotate every 200 milliseconds, limiting any single validator’s ability to exploit order flow.Unified BNB Stack: The new chain connects back to BNB Smart Chain through a native bridge, with BSC remaining the settlement hub and BNB serving as the unified asset across the stack.The Bigger Race: BNB Chain’s roadmap fits into a broader push to rebuild blockchain execution for automated trading. Solana’s Firedancer, Monad, and MegaETH are all attacking similar bottlenecks around speed, parallelization, and throughput.
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Written by David Christopher
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David is a writer/analyst at Bankless. Prior to joining Bankless, he worked for a series of early-stage crypto startups and on grants from the Ethereum, Solana, and Urbit Foundations. He graduated from Skidmore College in New York. He currently lives in the Midwest and enjoys NFTs, but no longer participates in them.
In brief BNB Chain plans to launch a new layer-1 blockchain focused on high-frequency trading and AI-driven transactions. The developers say the network will target more than 100,000 transactions per second, sub-second finality, and a testnet launch by late 2026. Planned upgrades include AI agent tools, privacy features, and research into quantum-resistant security. AI agents may be ready to trade crypto—but BNB Chain says today’s blockchains aren’t ready for them.
On Wednesday, BNB Chain unveiled plans for a new layer-1 blockchain built to handle high-frequency trading, automated payments, and AI-driven transactions at speeds closer to traditional financial markets. The new network will run alongside the existing BNB Chain blockchain, not replace it, according to its developers.
Detailed in its H2 2026 technical roadmap, the new network is expected to launch on testnet by the end of 2026, with a mainnet release planned for early 2027.
“Six months ago, BNB Chain set three priorities for BSC: speed, throughput, and protocol stability,” the developers wrote. “This roadmap opens with the receipts and closes with what comes next—a second half focused on doubling performance again, and an architecture designed for the decade ahead.”
According to BNB Chain, the new network is being built to eventually handle more than 100,000 transactions per second by processing multiple transactions at once and improving how data is stored and verified. The developers said it is also aiming to confirm transactions in less than 50 milliseconds and finalize blocks in under one second.
A major component of the new layer-one is TxStream. This system removes the public mempool where pending blockchain transactions are typically visible before confirmation and sends transactions directly to block leaders to reduce latency and limit front-running opportunities.
According to BNB Chain, upgrades to BNB Smart Chain during the first half of 2026 reduced block intervals from 750 milliseconds to 450 milliseconds and increased benchmark throughput from roughly 2,800 transactions per second to 5,200. The developers said its next phase will focus on further increasing throughput, reducing congestion between applications.
Beyond speed improvements, BNB Chain said it is researching quantum-resistant security as developers prepare for future threats from quantum computers.
The developers said they are exploring ways to add quantum-safe protections through account abstraction, allowing users to upgrade security without changing wallet addresses. The work remains in the research phase.
BNB Chain said its quantum security research focuses on protecting against future threats where more advanced quantum computers could decrypt encrypted data collected today. The developers said it is testing hybrid protections and ways for users to adopt quantum-safe security without changing wallet addresses.
“There's no finish line here. Quantum computing will keep evolving, and so will our testing and research,” they wrote. “The point is that when it matures, BNB Chain's infrastructure is already prepared.”
BNB Chain did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Decrypt.
The news comes as crypto and technology companies are building infrastructure for AI agents that can move money and execute transactions without constant human approval.
In March, Stripe-backed Tempo launched its payments-focused layer-1 blockchain alongside the Machine Payments Protocol, an open standard designed for transactions between AI agents and online services.
That same month, MoonPay launched the Open Wallet Standard, a framework developed with contributors including PayPal, Ethereum Foundation, Solana Foundation, Ripple, and others to let AI agents manage funds and execute transactions across blockchains.
In May, Amazon Web Services partnered with Coinbase and Stripe to launch Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Payments, which lets AI agents use USDC stablecoins to pay for APIs, data feeds, and online services, and in June, Coinbase launched Coinbase for Agents, a tool that lets AI agents trade crypto, make payments, and manage portfolios within user-defined limits.
Daily Debrief NewsletterStart every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.
In brief BNB Chain plans to launch a new layer-1 blockchain focused on high-frequency trading and AI-driven transactions. The developers say the network will target more than 100,000 transactions per second, sub-second finality, and a testnet launch by late 2026. Planned upgrades include AI agent tools, privacy features, and research into quantum-resistant security. AI agents may be ready to trade crypto—but BNB Chain says today’s blockchains aren’t ready for them.
On Wednesday, BNB Chain unveiled plans for a new layer-1 blockchain built to handle high-frequency trading, automated payments, and AI-driven transactions at speeds closer to traditional financial markets. The new network will run alongside the existing BNB Chain blockchain, not replace it, according to its developers.
Detailed in its H2 2026 technical roadmap, the new network is expected to launch on testnet by the end of 2026, with a mainnet release planned for early 2027.
“Six months ago, BNB Chain set three priorities for BSC: speed, throughput, and protocol stability,” the developers wrote. “This roadmap opens with the receipts and closes with what comes next—a second half focused on doubling performance again, and an architecture designed for the decade ahead.”
According to BNB Chain, the new network is being built to eventually handle more than 100,000 transactions per second by processing multiple transactions at once and improving how data is stored and verified. The developers said it is also aiming to confirm transactions in less than 50 milliseconds and finalize blocks in under one second.
A major component of the new layer-one is TxStream. This system removes the public mempool where pending blockchain transactions are typically visible before confirmation and sends transactions directly to block leaders to reduce latency and limit front-running opportunities.
According to BNB Chain, upgrades to BNB Smart Chain during the first half of 2026 reduced block intervals from 750 milliseconds to 450 milliseconds and increased benchmark throughput from roughly 2,800 transactions per second to 5,200. The developers said its next phase will focus on further increasing throughput, reducing congestion between applications.
Beyond speed improvements, BNB Chain said it is researching quantum-resistant security as developers prepare for future threats from quantum computers.
The developers said they are exploring ways to add quantum-safe protections through account abstraction, allowing users to upgrade security without changing wallet addresses. The work remains in the research phase.
BNB Chain said its quantum security research focuses on protecting against future threats where more advanced quantum computers could decrypt encrypted data collected today. The developers said it is testing hybrid protections and ways for users to adopt quantum-safe security without changing wallet addresses.
“There's no finish line here. Quantum computing will keep evolving, and so will our testing and research,” they wrote. “The point is that when it matures, BNB Chain's infrastructure is already prepared.”
BNB Chain did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Decrypt.
The news comes as crypto and technology companies are building infrastructure for AI agents that can move money and execute transactions without constant human approval.
In March, Stripe-backed Tempo launched its payments-focused layer-1 blockchain alongside the Machine Payments Protocol, an open standard designed for transactions between AI agents and online services.
That same month, MoonPay launched the Open Wallet Standard, a framework developed with contributors including PayPal, Ethereum Foundation, Solana Foundation, Ripple, and others to let AI agents manage funds and execute transactions across blockchains.
In May, Amazon Web Services partnered with Coinbase and Stripe to launch Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Payments, which lets AI agents use USDC stablecoins to pay for APIs, data feeds, and online services, and in June, Coinbase launched Coinbase for Agents, a tool that lets AI agents trade crypto, make payments, and manage portfolios within user-defined limits.
Daily Debrief NewsletterStart every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.
BNB Chain [BNB] has announced the launch of a new L1 blockchain for agentic trading. The focus is said to be on making trades faster, cleaner, and harder to manipulate.
Has the announcement helped the native token’s price though?
BNB Chain plans a faster L1 for agentic trading As part of its H2 tech roadmap, BNB Chain announced a new Layer 1. With this, automated systems and trading agents can execute transactions at high speed.
The new chain is expected to be alongside BNB Smart Chain, opBNB, and Greenfield. The goal is to bring on-chain trading closer to the speed and efficiency of CEXs, while still allowing self-custody.
We plan to ship it on testnet by the end of 2026, with mainnet release following in early 2027. More updates to come soon.
A key part of the design is removing the public mempool, which is where many front-running and sandwich attacks begin. Instead, transactions would be routed directly to block leaders through a system called TxStream.
The chain is also expected to reserve block space for important actions like liquidations, bridges, and oracle updates through PriorityLane.
BNB slips after L1 news In the hours after the announcement, BNB traded at around $561, with the hourly chart showing pressure. The RSI was down to 30, and the MACD was still below the signal line.
Source: TradingView Aggregated Open Interest was around $536 million, lower than the recent peak; traders are not adding much leverage. Funding, however, was positive at 0.0029, meaning longs are still present, but not overheated.
Source: Coinalyze The announcement hasn’t done enough to act as a price movement catalyst.
Whale activity makes the L1 thesis more relevant What’s interesting is the kind of market the announcement is landing in. CryptoQuant’s Futures Average Order Size chart showed BNB futures activity leaning toward big whale orders; this means larger traders are already active around the asset.
Source: Cryptoquant BNB Chain’s proposed L1 is clearly not being built for ordinary, slow-moving transactions alone. Faster pre-confirmation, no public mempool, and improved execution are more useful in markets where large orders and speed-sensitive trades play a bigger role.
This makes this metric an interesting one to watch.
Final Summary BNB Chain has announced a new agentic trading L1. The reception makes it clear that it’s perceived as a long-term trading infrastructure bet.
BNB Chain has quietly become the highway most stablecoins travel on. The Binance-affiliated blockchain has processed over 5.3 billion stablecoin transactions since 2025, capturing a 24% market share in a category that practically every major chain is fighting over.
That’s not just a vanity number. It translates to roughly 10 million stablecoin transactions per day and 15 million monthly active addresses, putting BNB Chain ahead of its competitors on the two metrics that arguably matter most: people actually using the thing, and the thing actually working at scale.
The numbers behind the dominance Stablecoin supply on BNB Chain doubled from $7 billion to a peak of $14 billion during 2025. A significant chunk of that momentum came from deliberate moves like the 0-Fee Stablecoin Carnival, an initiative that did exactly what the name suggests: eliminated transaction fees on stablecoins to juice adoption.
As of mid-2026, the stablecoin market cap on BNB Chain sits somewhere between $13.7 billion and $17 billion.
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Binance’s stablecoin reserves reached $53 billion as of July 2026, a figure that no other exchange comes close to matching. The platform’s share of stablecoin reserves climbed from 54% to 57% since early 2025.
Collaborations with stablecoin issuers, including the integration of USD1, have also expanded the variety of stablecoins circulating on the chain.
What’s coming next BNB Chain’s second-half 2026 roadmap prioritizes speed upgrades and the launch of a new layer-1 solution designed specifically for high-frequency trading.
What this means for investors BNB Chain’s 24% market share in stablecoin transactions creates network effects that are difficult for competitors to replicate. More stablecoin liquidity attracts more DeFi protocols, which attract more users, which attract more liquidity.
BNB Chain currently offers one of the deepest stablecoin liquidity pools in crypto, which translates to tighter spreads and more efficient execution for anyone operating in the DeFi space on the chain.
BNB Chain’s success is tightly coupled with Binance’s own fortunes. Regulatory pressure on the exchange, which has been a recurring theme across multiple jurisdictions, could create headwinds for the chain’s growth. A $53 billion stablecoin reserve is impressive until regulators start asking pointed questions about custody arrangements and reserve composition.
Ethereum, Tron, and Solana all have significant stablecoin ecosystems with their own network effects. Tron in particular has been a dominant force in USDT transfers for years.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Doubling Down on BSC Performance@BNBCHAIN has published its H2 2026 technical roadmap, and the targets are ambitious. After reducing BSC block intervals to 450 milliseconds and nearly doubling benchmark throughput to around 5,200 TPS, the team is now aiming for another 2x increase on mainnet, with a broader goal of 10x improvement over time.
The H1 track record gives the roadmap some credibility. Four major hardforks reduced block time from three seconds to 0.45 seconds and finality from 7.5 seconds to 1.125 seconds, while doubling network bandwidth to 133 million gas per second. On October 5th, 2025, BNB Chain reached an all-time high of 31 million daily transactions. Fees fell roughly 20 times without harming validator rewards, while total value locked rose over 40% and transactions grew 150% year-over-year. The team met its H1 targets. The question now is whether H2 can repeat that.
A New L1 Built for AI and High-Frequency TradingThe more consequential announcement is a purpose-built Layer 1. BNB Chain has announced plans to develop a new Layer 1 blockchain purpose-built for agentic trading, aiming to deliver centralized exchange-like performance while preserving the transparency and self-custody of on-chain trading.
The network plans to introduce sub-50 millisecond preconfirmation for near-instant transaction acknowledgement, while targeting more than 100,000 transactions per second and sub-one-second finality. The new Layer 1 is designed to support autonomous AI agents capable of executing trades, managing portfolios, providing liquidity, performing arbitrage, and interacting across decentralized finance protocols.
Rather than replacing the existing ecosystem, the new blockchain will operate alongside BNB Smart Chain, opBNB, and Greenfield, connected through an official native bridge, while continuing to use $BNB as the ecosystem's primary asset. A public testnet is expected by the end of 2026, with a mainnet release targeted for early 2027.
Beyond the new Layer 1, the roadmap also includes continued optimization of BNB Smart Chain, development of a Reth-based execution client, expanded support for parallel execution, AI-focused developer tools, and research into post-quantum cryptography.
BNB Chain has consistently delivered on its technical commitments over the past 18 months. Whether it can sustain that pace across an even more demanding set of targets will be the defining question of the year ahead.
Sources:
BNB Chain H2 2026 Tech Roadmap: Doubling Down on Speed
Crypto Briefing: BNB Chain Unveils 2026 Tech Roadmap
BNB Chain wants to bring decentralized finance into a new dimension. The network is preparing a fourth layer 1 blockchain fully dedicated to high-frequency trading and artificial intelligence agents. The goal is clear: to offer an execution speed comparable to centralized platforms, without sacrificing the custody of assets by users. While DeFi infrastructure performance remains a barrier for many institutional investors, this new architecture could reshuffle the competition between decentralized finance and centralized actors.
In brief BNB Chain is preparing a new blockchain capable of processing more than 100,000 transactions per second. Its architecture promises execution in 50 milliseconds to bring DeFi closer to the performance of centralized platforms. This Layer 1 will integrate into the BNB Stack and targets a gradual launch with a testnet at the end of 2026 followed by a mainnet at the beginning of 2027. If performance meets expectations, BNB Chain could intensify competition against Solana, Monad, MegaETH, and centralized exchanges. A parallelized infrastructure of 100,000 TPS to compete with CEX After the launch of Fermi last January, BNB Chain is preparing a new revolution. The architecture of this new Layer 1 is based on fully parallel execution designed to absorb massive transaction volumes without congesting the network. To achieve this, the project designers present particularly aggressive objectives :
A processing capacity exceeding 100,000 transactions per second (TPS) ; A block finality time of less than one second ; A fast pre-confirmation mechanism capable of validating an operation in less than 50 milliseconds. The main goal of this technological deployment is to replicate the smooth user experience and responsiveness of centralized exchanges (CEX), while eliminating the inherent risks of these structures. Moreover, the native integration of this network will allow traders to interact at a speed comparable to traditional order books without ever having to give up custody of their private keys or funds.
This speed quest directly responds to the demands of modern automated trading systems and large algorithmic funds. By removing the structural latency characteristic of previous-generation blockchains, BNB Chain seeks to attract capital flows that traditionally rely on fast execution for their arbitrage strategies.
Current decentralized infrastructures often suffer from fee fluctuations and slowdowns during volatility spikes, defects that this new parallelized chain intends to eradicate. By stabilizing processing time at the near-instantaneous level of 50 milliseconds, the network offers a predictable and highly reliable environment, essential to support the continuous activity of institutional market makers and guarantee optimal order book depth.
The TxStream mechanism and the end of the public mempool: an anti-MEV revolution To achieve such responsiveness while protecting financial flows, the new Layer 1 introduces a major technical break: the total elimination of the traditional public mempool. Instead, the network implements an exclusive transmission system called “TxStream”. This device routes user transactions directly and confidentially to the block producer currently validating the block.
To ensure decentralization of this process and to prevent a single actor from monopolizing the flow, block leaders alternate at an extremely high frequency of 200 milliseconds. This configuration eliminates the public antechamber where transactions usually wait to be processed, thus depriving malicious bots of the visibility needed to exploit the network.
This programmed opacity of the transaction flow neutralizes at the root the phenomenon of maximum extractable value (MEV), which heavily penalizes traders on other public blockchains. By prohibiting third-party observers from seeing orders before their final registration in a block, the TxStream mechanism technically prevents sandwich attacks and front-running.
Institutional investors and trading algorithms can thus execute large orders without fearing artificial price degradation caused by predatory arbitrage strategies. This native protection strengthens market fairness and ensures that the displayed execution price precisely matches the final transaction price, an essential standard to attract conventional on-chain finance.
Integration into the BNB Stack and the deployment schedule by 2027 The introduction of this fourth blockchain is part of a global multi-chain integration strategy within the BNB Stack ecosystem. The new network does not replace any existing infrastructure but operates synchronously with the three current pillars: the BNB Smart Chain (BSC), the Layer 2 solution opBNB, and the decentralized storage protocol Greenfield.
To ensure capital fluidity, this trading-dedicated chain will be linked to the BNB Smart Chain by a highly secure native bridge, the latter acting as the final settlement hub. The BNB token will maintain its central position at the heart of this architecture by serving as a unified payment asset for gas fees across all four networks, thereby consolidating its overall economic utility.
Operationally, the technical roadmap sets precise deadlines to test the viability and robustness of this innovation under real market load. The official schedule foresees the launch of the test network at the end of this year, a vital phase that will allow application developers and security auditors to test the performance of the TxStream system. This preparatory stage will then pave the way for a mainnet deployment planned for early 2027. Such a gradual deployment aims to ensure a secure transition for liquidity and to ensure that network validators maintain the strict synchronization required by the rapid alternation of block leaders.
In the long term, the emergence of this 50-millisecond trading network could profoundly change liquidity transfer dynamics between centralized finance and DeFi. If the promised performance is confirmed during the end-2026 testnet, BNB Chain will position itself as a direct competitor to high-performance architectures such as Solana and its Firedancer client, as well as new parallelized Layer 1s like Monad and MegaETH.
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Luc Jose A.
Diplômé de Sciences Po Toulouse et titulaire d'une certification consultant blockchain délivrée par Alyra, j'ai rejoint l'aventure Cointribune en 2019. Convaincu du potentiel de la blockchain pour transformer de nombreux secteurs de l'économie, j'ai pris l'engagement de sensibiliser et d'informer le grand public sur cet écosystème en constante évolution. Mon objectif est de permettre à chacun de mieux comprendre la blockchain et de saisir les opportunités qu'elle offre. Je m'efforce chaque jour de fournir une analyse objective de l'actualité, de décrypter les tendances du marché, de relayer les dernières innovations technologiques et de mettre en perspective les enjeux économiques et sociétaux de cette révolution en marche.
DISCLAIMER
The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this article belong solely to the author, and should not be taken as investment advice. Do your own research before taking any investment decisions.
@BNBCHAIN has quietly become one of the most active stablecoin highways in crypto. According to DefiLlama data, the chain has processed more than $2.5 trillion in cumulative stablecoin volume, with 2025 alone accounting for nearly $1 trillion of that figure. Its current stablecoin supply stands at $13.7 billion.
USDT Still Leads, But the Mix Is Changing $USDT dominates BNB Chain's stablecoin supply at roughly 67%. But the composition of the remaining share is shifting at pace. Two newer entrants, Circle's yield-bearing $USYC and World Liberty Financial's $USD1, have both moved ahead of $USDC in the chain's stablecoin rankings.
$USYC is Circle's tokenized money market fund, available on BNB Chain and giving eligible developers and traders access to a yield-bearing instrument integrated into existing DeFi protocols. Issued by Hashnote, a Circle subsidiary, USYC is backed by short-term U.S. Treasury bills and reverse repurchase agreements, and launched on BNB Chain with over $1 billion in assets under management. USYC now holds 96.3% of its global supply on BNB Chain.
$USD1, launched on Ethereum and BNB Chain in March 2025 by World Liberty Financial, grew to a circulating supply near $4.5 billion by Q1 2026, making it the fastest-growing fiat-backed stablecoin of the period. Its profile rose sharply when Abu Dhabi's MGX fund announced a $2 billion USD1 deal to acquire a minority stake in Binance. Around 40.3% of USD1's global supply is now routed through BNB Chain.
Broader Growth Context BNB Chain recorded 133% year-over-year growth in stablecoin market cap through 2025, placing it among the top four chains by stablecoin supply alongside Ethereum, Tron, and Solana. The launch of Four.meme, followed by Binance Alpha, a native token distribution program integrated directly into the Binance ecosystem, catalysed a renewed memecoin boom and sharply increased demand for stablecoin liquidity on the chain.
Measured by network usage rather than supply, BNB Chain leads all blockchains with more than 11 million unique addresses interacting with stablecoins, ahead of Tron and Polygon. With the stablecoin mix diversifying and cumulative volumes compounding, @BNBCHAIN's position as a primary venue for dollar-denominated on-chain activity looks increasingly entrenched.
Sources:
BNB Chain Stablecoin Data, DefiLlama
Circle: USYC Is Now Available on BNB Chain
Stablecoin Market Share by Chain Statistics 2026, CoinLaw
The latest data published by Dune Analytics reveal an important fact: stablecoins are entering a new phase of their development. Indeed, USDT and USDC are no longer seeking to dominate the same markets. The former establishes itself as the reference for payments. The latter, on the other hand, consolidates its place at the heart of DeFi. Analysts therefore agree on one point: this evolution could permanently transform the crypto ecosystem. More details in the following paragraphs!
In Brief Stablecoins no longer engage in a direct war: their uses are specializing. USDT concentrates the bulk of crypto payments, with nearly 95 billion dollars in commercial transactions observed. USDC maintains its lead in DeFi, exchanges, and dApps. The Tron, Ethereum, and Base networks play a decisive role in this distribution. This evolution could redefine global stablecoin adoption and accelerate their integration into financial infrastructures. USDT Establishes Itself as the King of Stablecoin Payments The data compiled by Dune Analytics indicate that USDT issued by Tether reigns supreme in the commercial transactions segment. Just in the first half of 2026, it represents about 95 billion dollars in stablecoin payments (compared to only 14 billion dollars for USDC). This amounts to a ratio close to 7 to 1.
That’s not all! The Tether stablecoin also captures nearly 92% of the 48 billion dollars in inter-company payments (B2B) volume alone during the same period.
Crypto analysts agree on this: if USDT currently outperforms its competitors in the stablecoin payment market, it is mainly thanks to the success of the Tron crypto network. About 93% of Tether’s total circulating supply is indeed held in private wallets rather than on exchanges or within complex protocols.
Breakdown: USDT stablecoins primarily serve as an accessible store of value, cross-border fund transfer instrument, and direct payment method for international trade. This illustrates concrete adoption. More importantly, this performance shows that Tether is now establishing itself as the monetary infrastructure of emerging markets.
Good to know: in June, USDT briefly surpassed Ethereum in terms of market capitalization.
USDC Becomes the Preferred Stablecoin of DeFi According to the Dune analysis report, Circle’s USDC rises to the rank of reference asset for:
liquidity providers; lending platforms; algorithmic traders. Specifically, the data report a massive concentration of USDC stablecoins on the Ethereum networks as well as its main growth layer 2, Base. In June 2026, for example, the USDC transfer volume on the Base crypto network reached a historic peak of 2.6 trillion dollars. This is the highest figure of all token-blockchain pairs tracked by Dune.
Even more interesting! During the same period, this digital asset processed 1.6 trillion dollars in transactions on Ethereum.
But Dune’s analysis reveals another key indicator: financial velocity. On Base, USDC indeed records a daily velocity equivalent to about 20 times its circulating supply. This means that a single digital dollar unit from Circle is reused on average twenty times per day across various smart contracts, yield loops, and DEX.
Unlike USDT, USDC stablecoins circulate mainly within an ecosystem where capital is constantly reallocated between different protocols. Simply put, they primarily feed on on-chain liquidity.
Chart showing the velocity of stablecoins (Source: Dune) A Historic Concentration That Redefines the Crypto Market Structure The Dune analysis result confirms an important point: the stablecoin market is entering a maturity phase. The days when USDT and USDC fought a sterile duel are now over. Today, the two main stablecoin issuers no longer compete for the same market shares. They extend their respective monopolies over distinct territories. Thus, each asset gradually develops a specialization.
Note that together, Tether and Circle now control nearly 83% of a global sector market capitalization amounting to 315 billion dollars. This calculation is based on tracking more than 200 stable assets across multiple blockchain networks.
To summarize this reversal, Dune CEO Fredrik Haga declared at the ETHCC 2026 held in Cannes:
The train is now moving.
For investors, the evolution of the stablecoin market shows that several players coexist today by responding to distinct needs:
On one side, USDT establishes itself as the preferred asset for international payments, fund transfers, and daily settlements. On the other, USDC becomes an essential component of DeFi protocols, trading platforms, and new financial services built on the blockchain. The key indicators now include transaction volumes, token circulation speed, liquidity depth, as well as diversity of use cases. In other words, stablecoin adoption no longer depends solely on their size. It also (and especially!) depends on their capacity to respond effectively to specific needs within the crypto ecosystem.
This Segmentation of the Stablecoin Market Complicates the Task for US Regulators Signed in June 2025, the GENIUS Act creates the first federal framework for payment stablecoins. Thanks to this law, banks have the possibility to issue digital assets pegged to the dollar. The CLARITY Act, meanwhile, defines the intervention areas of the SEC and the CFTC. It was adopted by the Senate banking committee in May by a vote of 15 to 9. Since then, it has faced persistent resistance.
Three unresolved disagreements indeed prevented the vote before July 4:
ethical obligations; protection of DeFi developers; stablecoin yield rules. The Senate resumes activity on July 13, with about three useful weeks before the August recess. Without a clear framework distinguishing a payment stablecoin from a stablecoin massively used in DeFi, regulatory uncertainty could weigh on the entire sector.
What Future for Stablecoins Facing Growing Institutional Demand? According to the Dune analysis report, the evolution of the stablecoin market towards segmentation by use is probably just a stage. It could even intensify further in the coming years, propelled by:
the rise of digital payments; asset tokenization; the arrival of new institutional players. These are all factors that should reinforce differentiated uses of the main stablecoins.
That’s not all! The boundary between payment and DeFi could also be redrawn if new issuers target specific niches like inter-company payments or institutional liquidity.
For Tether, the challenge will be to consolidate its lead in payments while supporting the expansion of digital economies. For Circle, the priority will probably remain the integration of USDC into decentralized finance infrastructures and regulated financial services.
In any case, the split in the stablecoin market demonstrates the maturity of the crypto ecosystem. It remains to be seen whether the emergence of CBDCs will disrupt this perfectly orchestrated private equilibrium. Knowing that the latter are not unanimous either.
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Ariela R.
My name is Ariela, and I am 31 years old. I have been working in the field of web writing for 7 years now. I only discovered trading and cryptocurrency a few years ago, but it is a universe that greatly interests me. The topics covered on the platform allow me to learn more. A singer in my spare time, I also cultivate a great passion for music and reading (and animals!)
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The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this article belong solely to the author, and should not be taken as investment advice. Do your own research before taking any investment decisions.
This is a general announcement. Products and services referred to here may not be available in your region. Fellow Binancians, We’re back on the Football Pitch! Due to the incredible engagement in The Pitch is Yours, we are bringing the Football Game back to our Binance Discord to celebrate the final stage of the challenge of the year. To mark this occasion, we invite users to join our community activity on Binance Discord. During the Activity Period, users can head to the dedicated Discord channels and submit a quiz for each of the football matches taking place throughout the campaign. For every match, users will be asked to choose the winning team before the match to start. Points are awarded based on the accuracy and how quickly submissions are made. The 180 highest-scoring users at the end of the campaign will share the prize pool of 2,000 USDC, distributed according to the reward structure outlined below. Activity Period: 2026-07-08 15:00 (UTC) to 2026-07-20 23:59 (UTC) How to Participate: Join the Binance DiscordHead to channel #football-matches to see the upcoming match quizClick [Submit Now] and choose your quiz resultYou can update your football quiz anytime before the match closesCheck your submission confirmation in #football-feedTrack your standing in #football-leaderboardJoin the football conversation in #football-discussion Points System: Every interaction counts. The more users participate, the faster users submit, and the more consistent they are, the higher they climb in the leaderboard. Here's how points are earned: ActionPoints per Eligible UserCorrect quiz result+10 pointsParticipate in any match (win or lose)+1 pointFastest and correct submission+3 points2nd fastest and correct submission+2 points3rd fastest and correct submission+1 point3 correct outcomes in a row+5 pointsMaximum points possible108 points Reward Structure: The total prize pool for the campaign is 2,000 USDC. A total of 180 users will be rewarded based on their final position on the leaderboard at the end of the Activity Period. Tier 1 - 1st to 5th Places: Each user will receive 80 USDC (400 USDC total)Tier 2 - 6th to 15th Places: Each user will receive 35 USDC (350 USDC total)Tier 3 - 16th to 25th Places: Each user will receive 25 USDC (250 USDC total)Tier 4 - 26th to 80th Places: Each user will receive 10 USDC (550 USDC total)Tier 5 - 81st to 180th Places: Each user will receive 4.50 USDC (450 USDC total) Terms & Conditions: Products and promotions may not be available in certain countries and to certain users. Content users see should not be construed as solicitation or advice to use any Binance feature. This content is not intended for users to which restrictions apply. Users are responsible for informing themselves about and observing any restrictions and/or requirements imposed with respect to the access to and use of Binance services in each country. Applicable restrictions will be applied to all landing pages in links included in our informational messages. 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All decisions made by Binance in connection with this campaign are final and binding and no correspondence will be entered into. Thank you for your support! Binance Team 2026-07-08
For all the talk about stablecoins being interchangeable commodities, the numbers from the first half of 2026 paint a starkly different picture. USDT and USDC, the two behemoths that together control 83% of the $315 billion stablecoin market, are no longer competing for the same turf. Instead, they are carving out entirely distinct domains.
According to the original report, Dune Analytics data compiled by Cointelegraph shows USDT processed roughly $95 billion in commercial payment settlements in the first half of the year. USDC managed a fraction of that, just $14 billion. The gap widens further in business-to-business transactions, where USDT held 92% of the market.
USDT’s Grip on Commercial Payments The Tron network remains the backbone of this payment dominance. It is the largest host for USDT, and on that chain, about 93% of the token supply sits in regular wallets rather than smart contracts. That figure signals a user base far more interested in moving money than in chasing yield. Low fees and high throughput have made Tron a de facto remittance rail in markets where dollar access is constrained.
USDT’s $95 billion in settlements is not just a vanity metric. It points to a use case that extends well beyond crypto-native activity. Merchants, logistics firms, and import-export businesses in emerging economies increasingly use Tether as working capital. The 92% B2B share underscores that when companies need to settle invoices, they reach for USDT.
USDC’s Deep DeFi Entrenchment Circle’s stablecoin tells a very different story. In June alone, USDC processed approximately $2.6 trillion in transfer volume on the Base network and an additional $1.6 trillion on Ethereum. Those numbers eclipse USDT’s H1 payment totals, but the activity is concentrated inside decentralized finance protocols. Liquidity pools, lending markets, and automated strategies on Base and Ethereum drive the vast majority of that volume.
Base, the Coinbase-incubated layer-2, has rapidly become USDC’s preferred settlement layer, reflecting how exchange-linked infrastructure can tilt stablecoin usage. Ethereum remains the institutional DeFi venue, hosting high-value transactions that demand its battle-tested security. Both chains are among the networks that consistently top developer activity rankings, a fact that reinforces USDC’s alignment with innovation rather than simple dollar transfer.
Network Effects Reinforce the Split The divergence is not accidental. Stablecoin adoption is sticky, and once a network becomes the default rail for a particular use case, liquidity concentrates there. On Tron, USDT benefits from deep integration with wallets and exchanges that cater to payment flows. On Base and Ethereum, USDC is woven into the composability layer of DeFi, where every new protocol deepens its moat. The rising tide of real-world asset tokenization only strengthens that position, as institutional participants overwhelmingly favor regulated, transparent stablecoins for on-chain settlement.
What remains unclear is whether either stablecoin can encroach on the other’s territory. USDT has tried DeFi integrations before, but its lower regulatory clarity has limited serious institutional participation. USDC, while compliant, has not demonstrated an appetite for the high-volume, low-margin payments business that Tether dominates. The market seems content with a dual structure, at least for now.
What It Means for the $315B Market Investors and regulators are watching this split closely. A stablecoin market that divides cleanly along payment and DeFi lines raises distinct oversight questions for each vertical. Payments demand anti-money laundering controls and sanctions compliance. DeFi raises concerns about systemic risk, oracle manipulation, and the safety of yield-bearing products. The intensifying stablecoin regulation debate in Washington could force a reckoning that treats these use cases differently.
For traders, the split offers clarity. USDT remains the go-to quote asset for offshore exchanges and peer-to-peer markets, while USDC functions as the primary unit of account in DeFi. The combined $315 billion market cap is now more nuanced than a simple number. It reflects two parallel financial systems, each with its own geography, user base, and risk profile. Whether that structure holds or collapses under the weight of new regulation is the question that will define stablecoins in 2026’s second half.
AUTHOR
Max delves deep into the cryptocurrency realm, with a passion for altcoins and NFTs. Convinced of crypto's transformative potential, he envisions a decentralized financial future. Max's background in the financial sector grants him unique insights into global monetary systems. In his leisure, Max embraces the thrill of adventures and is an avid sports enthusiast, finding balance and rejuvenation away from work.
Stablecoin supply is shrinking, and it’s becoming one of the biggest reasons behind Bitcoin’s weak price action. New data from CryptoQuant shows fresh stablecoin inflows to exchanges have dropped 31% yearly.
Meanwhile, the combined supply of USDT and USDC is also falling, reducing the buying power needed to support Bitcoin’s recovery.
Stablecoins like USDT and USDC, which are often called the cash of the crypto market are seeing its value shrink by nearly $3 billion every month.
According to CryptoQuant analyst Axel Adler Jr., stablecoin exchange inflows are now 31% below their yearly average, indicating that investors are pulling money out instead of bringing new capital into crypto exchanges.
The 30-day average of stablecoin inflows has fallen from $3.2 billion in mid-May to around $2.65 billion. Meanwhile, the yearly average remains near $3.86 billion, showing that exchanges are receiving much less fresh capital than normal.
On top of that, the combined USDT and USDC market cap has dropped from almost flat growth in May to nearly negative $3.2 billion today.
Bitcoin Is Losing Its Biggest Source of Buying PowerAdler says the drop in the stablecoin market is directly affecting crypto, especially Bitcoin.
“When more stablecoins enter the market, buying power grows. When supply shrinks, demand also weakens.”
And since mid-May, supply has been shrinking, reducing liquidity and making it harder for Bitcoin to recover. This lack of new capital has made it harder for Bitcoin to recover. Therefore, Bitcoin has seen a drop of about 19% in May and 20.5% in June.
The slowdown is also visible on-chain. Monthly USDT and USDC transfer volume on Ethereum dropped from about $2.84 trillion in March to nearly $1.5 trillion in May before seeing a small recovery in June.
Bitcoin Is Following A Pattern Seen During 2022 Market CrashThe current trend looks similar to what happened during the 2022 crypto crash. During the bear market, stablecoin supply dropped 34%, while Bitcoin lost around 43% of its value.
Today, the decline is much smaller, but the direction remains the same. But, the Stablecoin supply has slipped about 4.4% from its $321 billion peak, while Bitcoin has already fallen roughly 32% from its recent year highs.
However, if stablecoin supply continues to surge, Bitcoin could see a bullish rally, as more capital will flow back to the crypto market.
Story Ends Here
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Circle Gateway just posted its best week ever for USDC minting and transfers, pushing the service’s total lifetime volume past $4.5 billion. For a piece of infrastructure most retail users have never heard of, that’s a number worth paying attention to.
Gateway is Circle’s answer to one of crypto’s most persistent headaches: moving stablecoins between blockchains without the jankiness of traditional bridges. Instead of locking tokens on one chain and minting wrapped versions on another, Gateway uses a burn-and-mint mechanism. You burn USDC on the source chain, an attestation gets issued, and fresh USDC gets minted on the destination chain. No wrapped tokens, no pre-positioned liquidity pools.
How Gateway actually works The system operates across multiple blockchains, including Solana and EVM-compatible networks like Ethereum, Arbitrum, and others. Circle claims the process completes in under 500 milliseconds on supported chains.
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A key milestone came in January 2026, when Circle deployed a pre-mint address for USDC on Solana ahead of Gateway’s full mainnet launch on that network.
The introduction of programmatic minting features has also expanded who can interact with Gateway directly. Rather than requiring manual processes or custom integrations, institutional partners can now access minting operations through standardized APIs.
The bigger USDC picture USDC accounted for approximately 70% of adjusted stablecoin transaction volume during the first half of 2026.
Circle reported $21.5 trillion in on-chain USDC transaction volumes for Q1 2026 alone.
What this means for investors and the stablecoin market Circle went public earlier this year, making its financial health more transparent than any other major stablecoin issuer.
The risk side of the equation isn’t zero. Circle’s burn-and-mint model centralizes trust in Circle itself. If Circle’s attestation service goes down, cross-chain USDC transfers stop.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
USDC has now processed more than $90 trillion in cumulative on-chain transaction volume. To put that number in perspective, it’s roughly four times the annual GDP of the United States, all flowing through a single stablecoin.
Circle announced the milestone on July 7, 2026, pegging the exact figure at $90.8 trillion in lifetime volume. For a token that launched in September 2018, that trajectory from zero to nearly $91 trillion tells a story about where institutional money is actually moving in crypto.
The numbers behind the dominance In June 2026, adjusted stablecoin transaction volume hit a record $1.79 trillion, according to Visa’s Allium analytics. USDC captured approximately $1.21 trillion of that total, good for roughly 67% of the entire adjusted stablecoin market in a single month.
Zoom out to the first half of 2026, and the picture sharpens further. USDC commanded about 70% of adjusted stablecoin transaction volumes during the period. USDT, long considered the king of stablecoins by market cap, held just 25%.
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USDC’s circulating supply currently sits at approximately $73 billion, backed by reserves slightly exceeding that amount at around $73.2 billion. The token now operates across more than 34 blockchains.
How USDC flipped the script on USDT Circle became the sole issuer of USDC after dissolving the Centre consortium with Coinbase back in 2023, giving it full control over the token’s direction and strategy.
Circle has also invested heavily in infrastructure, most notably its Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol, or CCTP. This protocol enables native USDC transfers across supported blockchains without the friction and security risks of traditional bridging.
What this means for investors Second, the competitive pressure on USDT is real and accelerating. Tether has historically maintained its lead through sheer ubiquity and first-mover advantage, particularly in Asian markets and on centralized exchanges. But a 70-25 volume split in USDC’s favor suggests that advantage is eroding, at least in the segments of the market where compliance and transparency are table stakes.
Third, consider the liquidity implications. As USDC captures more transaction volume and integrates deeper into traditional financial plumbing, it creates denser liquidity pools on supported chains. That benefits DeFi protocols, trading venues, and any application that relies on stablecoin liquidity to function efficiently.
Circle has positioned USDC not just as a payment token but as a building block for automated, smart-contract-driven financial workflows, including round-the-clock settlements, programmable payroll, and automated treasury management.
USDC’s growing market share means the stablecoin ecosystem is becoming more concentrated around a single issuer. If Circle were to face operational, regulatory, or reserve management issues, the blast radius would be significantly larger than it was even two years ago.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
The Gulf’s crypto ambitions are not slowing down. KuCoin’s partnership with a UAE crypto alliance adds another exchange-level move to a region that has spent the last few years trying to turn regulatory openness into institutional digital asset activity.
The useful way to read this is not as a guaranteed price signal, but as a fresh piece of information in a market that is trying to sort real developments from noise. For KuCoin, the value is strategic. Partnerships like this can help an exchange show it is not just chasing users, but trying to fit into a regional framework where regulators, institutions, and service providers all matter.
For more details, visit the official Chainwire platform.
TL;DR KuCoin announced a partnership with a UAE crypto alliance.The deal is framed around institutional access and local collaboration.It reflects the Gulf region’s continued push to position itself as a digital asset hub. Why the UAE keeps showing up The UAE has become one of the more visible markets for crypto firms looking for a clearer operating base. That does not mean every partnership is transformative, but it does show that companies still see value in local relationships, compliance discussions, and institutional access routes.
For KuCoin, the value is strategic. Partnerships like this can help an exchange show it is not just chasing users, but trying to fit into a regional framework where regulators, institutions, and service providers all matter.
The Market Read Frame as regional infrastructure positioning; do not overstate immediate trading impact.
That is the balance readers need to keep in mind. Crypto markets are quick to turn every update into a single-direction trade, but most durable stories are more layered than that. They matter because they change positioning, incentives, infrastructure, or regulation over time.
What Comes Into Focus Now From here, the important thing is follow-through. If the source data, company update, filing, or on-chain record continues to move in the same direction, this can become part of a larger trend. If it stalls, it is still useful as a snapshot of where attention is sitting today.
For traders and readers, the cleaner takeaway is to separate the confirmed development from the speculation around it. The confirmed part is what deserves coverage. The speculation is what needs caution.
For Crypto readers specifically, the story is useful because it gives a clearer frame for the next few sessions. It tells them what to watch, which part of the market is reacting, and where the first obvious risk sits. That is more valuable than simply saying a token, company, or regulator has made a move. The useful work is in connecting the update to liquidity, positioning, adoption, enforcement, or user behaviour without pretending that any single headline controls the whole market.
The practical question now is whether this remains an isolated update or becomes part of a chain of follow-through. A second filing, another wallet move, fresh dashboard data, a new governance vote, or a stronger market reaction can all turn a clean single-day story into a broader narrative. Without that follow-through, it still matters, but more as a marker of where attention was concentrated on July 8 than as a complete trend on its own.
That distinction is especially important in a market where headlines can travel faster than context. A source-backed update gives readers something firmer to work with, but it does not remove liquidity risk, execution risk, or the chance that traders fade the initial reaction once the first wave of attention passes.
In that sense, the headline is only the starting point. The better read is to watch how builders, exchanges, funds, wallets, regulators, or large holders respond after the first announcement has moved through the feed.
This report is based on information from chainwire.org.
This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.
The Gulf’s crypto ambitions are not slowing down. KuCoin’s partnership with a UAE crypto alliance adds another exchange-level move to a region that has spent the last few years trying to turn regulatory openness into institutional digital asset activity.
The useful way to read this is not as a guaranteed price signal, but as a fresh piece of information in a market that is trying to sort real developments from noise. For KuCoin, the value is strategic. Partnerships like this can help an exchange show it is not just chasing users, but trying to fit into a regional framework where regulators, institutions, and service providers all matter.
For more details, visit the official Chainwire platform.
TL;DR KuCoin announced a partnership with a UAE crypto alliance.The deal is framed around institutional access and local collaboration.It reflects the Gulf region’s continued push to position itself as a digital asset hub. Why the UAE keeps showing up The UAE has become one of the more visible markets for crypto firms looking for a clearer operating base. That does not mean every partnership is transformative, but it does show that companies still see value in local relationships, compliance discussions, and institutional access routes.
For KuCoin, the value is strategic. Partnerships like this can help an exchange show it is not just chasing users, but trying to fit into a regional framework where regulators, institutions, and service providers all matter.
The Market Read Frame as regional infrastructure positioning; do not overstate immediate trading impact.
That is the balance readers need to keep in mind. Crypto markets are quick to turn every update into a single-direction trade, but most durable stories are more layered than that. They matter because they change positioning, incentives, infrastructure, or regulation over time.
What Comes Into Focus Now From here, the important thing is follow-through. If the source data, company update, filing, or on-chain record continues to move in the same direction, this can become part of a larger trend. If it stalls, it is still useful as a snapshot of where attention is sitting today.
For traders and readers, the cleaner takeaway is to separate the confirmed development from the speculation around it. The confirmed part is what deserves coverage. The speculation is what needs caution.
For Crypto readers specifically, the story is useful because it gives a clearer frame for the next few sessions. It tells them what to watch, which part of the market is reacting, and where the first obvious risk sits. That is more valuable than simply saying a token, company, or regulator has made a move. The useful work is in connecting the update to liquidity, positioning, adoption, enforcement, or user behaviour without pretending that any single headline controls the whole market.
The practical question now is whether this remains an isolated update or becomes part of a chain of follow-through. A second filing, another wallet move, fresh dashboard data, a new governance vote, or a stronger market reaction can all turn a clean single-day story into a broader narrative. Without that follow-through, it still matters, but more as a marker of where attention was concentrated on July 8 than as a complete trend on its own.
That distinction is especially important in a market where headlines can travel faster than context. A source-backed update gives readers something firmer to work with, but it does not remove liquidity risk, execution risk, or the chance that traders fade the initial reaction once the first wave of attention passes.
In that sense, the headline is only the starting point. The better read is to watch how builders, exchanges, funds, wallets, regulators, or large holders respond after the first announcement has moved through the feed.
This report is based on information from chainwire.org.
This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.
Zcash price has pulled back from the $500 resistance zone after a sharp rally driven by renewed optimism around the upcoming Ironwood upgrade, although technical indicators still favor another attempt higher if key support levels continue to hold.
Summary
Zcash price has retreated from the $500 resistance after profit-taking, but continues to hold above the key $440 support zone. Technical indicators and liquidation data suggest a break above $480 could trigger another move toward the $500-$540 region. Rising geopolitical tensions, weaker institutional crypto demand, and regulatory pressure remain the biggest risks to the bullish outlook. According to data from crypto.news, Zcash (ZEC) price climbed to an intraday high of around $505 before retreating to about $466 on July 8 as traders locked in profits after a nearly 28% advance. The rejection came as leveraged longs accumulated near the psychological $500 barrier, allowing market makers to trigger a wave of long liquidations that accelerated the decline. Despite the retracement, the sell-off has so far remained above the critical $440 support that traders have been watching since the latest breakout.
Meanwhile, enthusiasm surrounding Zcash’s Ironwood upgrade continues to underpin investor sentiment. The network is preparing to activate the long-awaited upgrade later this month, introducing a mathematical proof designed to eliminate hidden counterfeiting risks inside its privacy pools. The milestone follows June’s emergency response to the Orchard vulnerability and has strengthened confidence that Zcash’s privacy infrastructure is nearing full restoration.
Technical structure continues to favor another test of $500 The daily chart shows Zcash holding above the 50% Fibonacci retracement level near $442 after rejecting from the 61.8% retracement at $500.48. Price also remains comfortably above the 38.2% Fibonacci support at $383, while the Chaikin Money Flow has climbed back into positive territory at 0.13, suggesting buying pressure continues to outweigh distribution.
Zcash daily price chart — July 8 | Source: crypto.news At the same time, the Aroon Up indicator has surged above 92%, confirming buyers still retain control of the prevailing trend despite the latest setback.
According to analyst Ardi, the recent rejection may actually strengthen the bullish setup rather than invalidate it. In a post on X, he argued that the decline simply retested a key breakout zone before another potential advance.
“Another layer of confluence to give me confidence that once we break and hold above the compound resistance, we’re on our way back above $500.”
His chart identifies a compound resistance around $480, where a descending trendline intersects horizontal resistance. A sustained daily close above that region could reopen the path toward $500 before exposing the macro resistance zone around $540.
Derivatives positioning presents a similar picture. CoinGlass liquidation data shows dense short liquidation clusters stacked between $480 and $500, with another large concentration sitting just above $520. Those pockets could fuel another squeeze if buyers reclaim the $480 resistance. On the downside, the largest long liquidation liquidity has accumulated near $450, making it an important support area should sellers regain momentum.
Zcash liquidation heatmap | Source: CoinGlass Macro risks could delay the next breakout attempt Outside crypto-specific catalysts, global macro conditions have become less supportive after fresh geopolitical tensions in the Middle East lifted oil prices and pushed U.S. Treasury yields higher. The move triggered another round of selling across technology shares and other risk assets, dragging Bitcoin back toward the $62,000 area and reducing appetite for high-volatility altcoins, including Zcash.
Crypto market liquidity has also weakened. The Coinbase Bitcoin Premium Index recently recorded its longest negative streak on record, highlighting subdued institutional demand from U.S. investors. At the same time, European lawmakers have continued advancing tighter oversight proposals covering decentralized finance, staking services, and privacy-focused protocols, adding another layer of uncertainty for privacy coins.
Those risks leave the technical outlook dependent on a handful of key price levels. Holding above $440 would preserve the current recovery structure and keep another move toward $480 and $500 in play.
A decisive break below that support, however, would invalidate the immediate bullish thesis and expose Zcash to a deeper retracement toward its 200-day exponential moving average near $382, where longer-term buyers may attempt to stabilize the trend.
Disclosure: This article does not represent investment advice. The content and materials featured on this page are for educational purposes only.
Zcash announced that the newly launched shielded Ironwood pool is being “formally verified” to rule out all undetectable counterfeiting bugs.
Ironwood pool was proposed as a solution after the project’s flagship Orchard pool encountered a counterfeiting bug that could have minted new ZEC tokens.
However, given the strong privacy design of the Zcash protocol, it couldn’t be verified whether the bug was exploited or not.
In early June, notable figures in the sector, such as Arthur Hayes, dumped their ZEC holdings and slammed the project for a lack of capacity to prove that the bug was not leveraged to mint new tokens.
The FUD dented market sentiment, dragging ZEC price down to $251 from $640, marking a +60% crash in three days. An attempt to calm the volatility by top privacy supporters failed to materialize.
The ZEC price crash only eased after the project proposed a new auditable Ironwood pool. The new pool had an internal mechanism to verify ZEC supply without compromising privacy.
Now, this is the first time the pool is being ‘formally verified’ to test whether it works as designed.
Will it renew trust in Zcash? For the project, the bug found last month will be the last one with the new auditable Ironwood shielded pool.
The recently discovered undetectable counterfeiting bug in Orchard wasn’t the first of its kind in Zcash. Thanks to formal verification of Ironwood, it will be the last.
Reacting to the update, Mertz Mumtaz, a privacy champion and founder of Helius Labs, billed the move as ‘colossal.’
This is colossal. Let me translate: this makes undetectable counterfeit bugs in Zcash mathematically impossible going forward. This was the biggest tradeoff in private money before, and Zcash has solved it.
For him, the market will take a while to grasp the update, but he expected it would eventually rally ZEC to $10K per coin.
Well, apart from last month’s bug issue, the protocol has advanced its plan for post-quantum recoverable wallets. Collectively, the formal verification, privacy, and post-quantum push could help build trust in the protocol again.
That said, the Orchard pool still dominates the shielded pool supply despite nearly 1 million ZEC redeemed last month amid the bug FUD.
Source: SEC Hub As of writing, the Ironwood pool had zero supply, and it remains to be seen whether it will attract ZEC users.
Will ZEC reclaim momentum? On the price charts, Zcash [ZEC] price jumped 6% after the update and tagged $512.
An extended recovery could only be confirmed if ZEC decisively reclaims $500 as support. If so, another 30% upside potential could be feasible towards $640-$680. Otherwise, a rejection at $500 would drag ZEC back to $380 (200-day SMA, blue line).
Source: ZEC/USDT, TradingView Final Summary Zcash has begun formal verification of the Ironwood shielded pool to eliminate undetectable counterfeiting bugs witnessed in the Orchard pool ZEC could present an extra +30% gain if the update rebuilds trust in the protocol
Ahmed Balaha is a journalist and copywriter based in Georgia with a growing focus on blockchain technology, DeFi, AI, privacy, digital assets, and fintech innovation.
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Eli Ben-Sasson, Zcash founder and and CEO of StarkWare, the company behind Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solution Starknet, publicly argued that Bitcoin 21 million supply cap “doesn’t make sense.” He is also proposing instead that the network adopt a hard ceiling on the annual issuance rate.
Ben-Sasson’s core argument centers on key loss. Because private keys are permanently lost over time, the coins attached to those keys remain on the ledger but fall out of practical circulation, making the usable supply unknowable and trending downward. His proposed fix: replace the fixed total-coin ceiling with a fixed inflation rate ceiling. His specific figure was 4% per year, which he described as “a reasonable upper bound on human population expansion.”
Capping the supply of Bitcoin at 21M doesn't make sense. Beacuse over time, keys will be lost. In fact, as time goes to infinity, all keys will be lost.
I strongly support a clear monetary policy with an absolute upper bound on the # of Bitcoins in the future. Say, fix a max…
— Eli Ben-Sasson | Starknet.io (@EliBenSasson) July 7, 2026 The shift is from capping the stock of coins to capping the annual flow of new issuance, a distinction that sounds technical but carries enormous structural implications for every holder who priced Bitcoin’s scarcity into their position.
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Zcash Co-Founder Right about Bitcoin?Alongside the lost-key argument, the Zcash co-founder, Ben-Sasson, flagged Bitcoin miner security as a compounding concern. The block reward currently stands at 3.125 BTC following the April 2024 halving, and it will continue to decline on schedule, eventually reaching zero around 2140. As the subsidy shrinks, miners depend increasingly on transaction fee revenue to stay economically viable, and a network that cannot sustain miner participation becomes progressively more vulnerable to attack. Ben-Sasson described this risk as “looming large on the horizon.”
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This part of the argument has genuine traction among protocol researchers, independent of whether one accepts the rest of Ben-Sasson’s thesis. Bitcoin’s long-run security model is a real open question – the assumption that fee revenue will fully compensate for the disappearing block reward is unproven at scale. Raising that issue does not require agreeing that the supply cap should change.
The lost-coin case is harder to quantify precisely. We estimated the effective circulating cap at roughly 18.5 million BTC once permanently inaccessible coins are excluded, with Ledger placing lost supply as high as 4 million BTC as of late 2024. Approximately 19.9 million BTC have already been mined, or around 95% of the eventual total, leaving only about 1.1 million BTC remaining to be issued over the next century-plus. The attrition from key loss is real.
Discover: The Best Crypto to Diversify Your Portfolio
This Won’t Go NowhereThe governance math is unambiguous. Changing Bitcoin’s supply cap would require a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal, new client software, and adoption by miners, nodes, and users. Approximately 97% of Bitcoin nodes currently enforce the existing supply schedule. A cap change is not technically impossible, but a fork that dilutes scarcity would split the chain and likely destroy much of the value it was ostensibly trying to preserve. The debate around Bitcoin’s role as a strategic reserve asset makes any hint of supply flexibility even more politically toxic in the current environment.
The community’s divisibility counterargument is also worth understanding precisely. Bitcoin’s 21 million coins subdivide into 2.1 quadrillion satoshis, providing more than enough unit granularity to accommodate adoption at any realistic price level. Ben-Sasson’s rebuttal, that “satoshis would also trend toward zero in absolute terms if key loss continues indefinitely,” is technically correct but operates on a timescale measured in centuries, not trading horizons.
This is a terrible idea. The fact that you can think of changing a protocol built around scarcity and decentralization. Once one major change like this is made then others will come on in and do the same. You're destroying the idea of what Bitcoin set out to be .Why don't you…
— Angel Akiyta (@AngelAkiyta) July 7, 2026 What makes Ben-Sasson’s intervention notable is not its probability of success. It has none. What matters is who is raising the argument and why: a prominent ZK-proof technologist with credibility in the Ethereum ecosystem, citing miner security degradation as the mechanism that could eventually force the conversation.
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Overview This is the v0.18.5.1 release of the Monero software. This recommended release includes a large number of bug fixes.
Some highlights of this release are:
Daemon: display IPv6 connections (#10611) Daemon: fix slow shutdown with Tor/I2P enabled (#10698) Daemon: avoid unsafe pidfile truncation (#10608) Daemon: use latest hard fork block for approximate blockchain height (#10580) Daemon: restrict get_alt_blocks_hashes RPC (#10610) Daemon: fix wrong block_weight in handle_get_objects (#10715) Daemon: improve incoming block scan table handling (#10838) Daemon: restore safe sync mode when target height drops (#10598) Daemon: canonicalize Tor and I2P hostnames (#10638, #10704) Daemon: fix dangling iterator in remote host checks (#10649) Daemon: improve duplicate transaction handling in handle_notify_new_transactions (#10836) Daemon: fix use-after-free in txpool prune (#10710) ZMQ: cap aggregate receive size (#10757) ZMQ: apply restricted-mode privacy filtering to get_transaction_pool (#10543) Wallet: store multisig nonce erasure before returning signed txset (#10754) Wallet: hardening against malicious remote nodes (#10773, #10776, #10774) Wallet RPC: add missing trusted daemon check to rescan_spent (#10542) Wallet RPC: fix describe_transfer source entry (#10592) Wallet RPC: preserve payment ID when editing address book (#10590) Wallet RPC: remove unused finalize_multisig endpoint (#10615) Miner: fix thread 0 always using secure JIT (#10743) RandomX: update to v1.2.2 (#10571) Fix memory leak with readline (#10568) Fix memory leak with RandomX integration on Windows (#10546) Various bug fixes and improvements The complete list of changes is available on GitHub, along with the source code.
Contributors for this Release This release was the direct result of 13 people who worked to put out 102 commits containing 1094 new lines of code. We'd like to thank them very much for their time and effort. In no particular order, they are:
jeffro256 tobtoht SNeedlewoods selsta greatjourney589 iuyua9 glv2 alhudz nahuhh woodser ComputeryPony SChernykh j-berman Download The new binaries can be downloaded from the Downloads page or from the direct links below.
Windows, 64-bit Windows, 32-bit macOS, Intel macOS, ARM Linux, 64-bit Linux, 32-bit Linux, armv7 Linux, armv8 Linux, riscv64 Android, armv7 Android, armv8 FreeBSD, 64-bit Hashes If you would like to verify that you have downloaded the correct file, please use the following SHA256 hashes:
monero-win-x64-v0.18.5.1.zip, cf2ae8273977697d9ef2031c7337b781e6e5936578f602444b2990a173a2437d monero-win-x86-v0.18.5.1.zip, f79746868794786ba4ca3c5a30191263ffb0b9a4ab1c0ffcbe30fd5d04986380 monero-mac-x64-v0.18.5.1.tar.bz2, 82e305bbf6128b386571bed173dae316f9dd06c4ee1217c5eda849444bec89a9 monero-mac-armv8-v0.18.5.1.tar.bz2, dba08921841e675384ce019fd7c93b59fe7b1e6edaa0a3cf0e3253e263f61864 monero-linux-x64-v0.18.5.1.tar.bz2, 22a7dda7b0cb699fdd6b7674c3b4a4465b337cc98a54983523b759e1e7cc9958 monero-linux-x86-v0.18.5.1.tar.bz2, 68783d76d9eac543d593ca1bdfa9c7eb540ec6c646acc68421702465c1d86182 monero-linux-armv8-v0.18.5.1.tar.bz2, c0caf042cb7c7b760f5ad6be188084b59352440b32990a78b8051497b9398dbc monero-linux-armv7-v0.18.5.1.tar.bz2, bd6693ac411919d474d98c9e7d7bae1f03e7ef7f1d779a15e2ba3a188c958d36 monero-linux-riscv64-v0.18.5.1.tar.bz2, 28ead34fa4320ea6809f16c4b064d3b430e71caf3155d25677cc624388fc0ee5 monero-android-armv8-v0.18.5.1.tar.bz2, a2c0fb240c5eaa947f5a2382ece4613c59b299645ad4d1480ef24e71b8aa8c8f monero-android-armv7-v0.18.5.1.tar.bz2, daa56844251a9e9f296caaaafcf72c60dade54ae93146085d627ffc883b0fec3 monero-freebsd-x64-v0.18.5.1.tar.bz2, cc32bb64fb577254fe24441e2db0b722dfedff5c953427ffbf396dc16f0feb62 A GPG-signed list of the hashes is at https://www.getmonero.org/downloads/hashes.txt and should be treated as canonical, with the signature checked against the appropriate GPG key in the source code (in /utils/gpg_keys). To ensure that the files you download are those originally posted by the maintainers, you should both check that the hashes of your files match those on the signed list, and that the signature on the list is valid.
Two guides are available to guide you through the verification process: Verify binaries on Windows (beginner) and Verify binaries on Linux, Mac, or Windows command line (advanced).
Overview This is the v0.18.5.1 release of the Monero GUI software. This recommended release includes a large number of bug fixes.
The latest CLI release notes can be found on the precedent blog post
Some highlights of this release are:
Fix a memory safety issue during QR code scanning (#4597) Fix wallet freeze on shutdown edge case (#4603) Prevent CSV formula injection during export (#4609) Apply consistent text escaping across rich text views (#4610) Fix console log spam on startup (#4615) Check wallet file directory is writable during wallet creation (#4617) Add confirmation dialog for unauthenticated OpenAlias (#4618) Fix generic name in desktop file (#4590) Hide update popup during device passphrase prompt (#4623) Set desktop entry ID for the application (#4625) Update P2Pool to v4.17.1 (#4620) Minor bug fixes The complete list of changes is available on GitHub, along with the source code.
Contributors for this Release This release was the direct result of 8 people who worked to put out 48 commits containing 192 new lines of code. We'd like to thank them very much for their time and effort. In no particular order, they are:
tobtoht selsta SChernykh jpk68 City-busz SNeedlewoods plowsof thomasbuilds Download The new binaries can be downloaded from the Downloads page or from the direct links below.
Windows, 64-bit Windows, 64-bit (Installer) macOS, Intel macOS, ARM Linux, 64-bit A complete guide for the GUI wallet is included in the archives, but an online version is available.
Download Hashes If you would like to verify that you have downloaded the correct file, please use the following SHA256 hashes:
monero-gui-win-x64-v0.18.5.1.zip, 9241bb617bc4de37b0c3b2481c234ce39984ba2615fc65991979c189f092c918 monero-gui-install-win-x64-v0.18.5.1.exe, 0c0880b62edf00ee4291b37c4ba32227fd1bc31433d84929eeec1e2862bd1c0f monero-gui-mac-x64-v0.18.5.1.dmg, 1f7b2c3a0e83180267d4c09cbb4f4d14b35c4f3c218abae585f0bb288f8bf01c monero-gui-mac-armv8-v0.18.5.1.dmg, c40a9125a976d7f063216f286976a252eb5a7f26206bd034f25782691786f18c monero-gui-linux-x64-v0.18.5.1.tar.bz2, ecf7f734fb0048896b12f7e04e4f69a0257271f8411c06d30cd701371d2fd155 A GPG-signed list of the hashes is at https://www.getmonero.org/downloads/hashes.txt and should be treated as canonical, with the signature checked against the appropriate GPG key in the source code (in /utils/gpg_keys). To ensure that the files you download are those originally posted by the maintainers, you should both check that the hashes of your files match those on the signed list, and that the signature on the list is valid.
Two guides are available to guide you through the verification process: Verify binaries on Windows (beginner) and Verify binaries on Linux, Mac, or Windows command line (advanced).
The award-winning, world-first crypto debit-and-credit card arrives in Argentina alongside a leadership transition, positioning Buenos Aires as Nexo's regional hub for Latin America.
Buenos Aires, July 08, 2026 — Nexo, the premier digital assets wealth platform, today launched the Nexo Card in Argentina, timed with the appointment of Andres Ondarra as General Manager, Nexo Argentina. These two milestones mark the next stage of Nexo's growth in a market where digital asset adoption runs deeper than almost anywhere else — the highest share of any market surveyed.
The Nexo Card lets clients spend digital assets directly in debit mode or borrow against them as collateral in credit mode, without selling — switching between the two in a single interface. New clients get 10% back on their first swipe, plus additional cashback and milestone rewards worth up to USD 450 in total over their first three months as they earn up to 13% annual interest on idle in-app balances, paid daily. Cardholders also get fee-free ATM withdrawals of up to USD 1,000 and fee-free foreign-currency spending of up to USD 2,000 each month, alongside a monthly rebate on a leading subscription service and annual airport lounge access with fast-track security. The card has been recognized by the Digital Banker Awards, the FinTech Breakthrough Awards, and the PAY360 Awards.
Powerful benefits, no matter how you spend.Spending in ARS and US$: Clients can pay in pesos at home with no currency conversion, or spend US$ at over 100 million merchants worldwide.Borrowing from 1.9% per year: Users can spend against their crypto with the only crypto credit card of its kind in Argentina.Interest on account balance: Nexo clients can receive up to 13% per year on the funds they haven't spent, paid out daily.No monthly, annual, or inactivity fees — plus a monthly allowance of up to US$1,000 in ATM withdrawals.Stay in control at all times: Various ways to manage your spending, balances, and rewards in-app, complete with card freezes, spending controls, and biometric locks.Beyond everyday spending: Clients can unlock airport lounge access, fast-track security, and rebates on subscriptions like Netflix and Spotify as your portfolio grows."Argentine clients have spent a decade making digital assets part of how they manage wealth. The Nexo Card is built precisely for that — letting them spend in debit mode, borrow against their holdings in credit mode, and earn from every transaction, all without having to sell. It's the freedom to live on that wealth, not just hold it," said Andres Ondarra, incoming General Manager, Nexo Argentina.
Ondarra brings more than 25 years of experience across traditional finance, fintech, and crypto in Latin America, including a background in Wall Street investment banking. From August 1, he will lead Nexo Argentina's operations, with a focus on client trust and the company's continued growth in the country.
He succeeds Federico Ogue, who oversaw Nexo's Argentine expansion and is transitioning to a new entrepreneurial venture. "Argentina has one of the most sophisticated crypto and fintech ecosystems in the region, and the work Nexo has done here is something to be proud of. I look forward to passing the baton to Andres, who brings exactly the experience and vision to lead Nexo's next stage of growth in Argentina," said Ogue.
Argentina processed approximately USD 93.9 billion in digital-asset transactions over three years, ranking second in Latin America behind Brazil. With capital already moved into digital assets, the Nexo Card addresses what comes next: everyday utility — spending, borrowing, and earning from those holdings without selling them.
With Buenos Aires now established as a regional hub, Nexo is investing in local infrastructure, sport partnerships — including the AFA — and a local team supporting clients across Latin America. Eligible clients in Argentina can apply for the Nexo Card through the Nexo app and website.
About Nexo
Nexo is a premier digital assets wealth platform designed to empower clients to grow, manage, and preserve their crypto holdings. Nexo’s mission is to lead the next generation of wealth creation by focusing on customer success and delivering tailored solutions that build enduring value, supported by 24/7 client care.
Since 2018, Nexo has provided unmatched opportunities to forward-thinking clients in over 199 jurisdictions. With over $7 billion in client assets and over $430 billion processed, we bring lasting value to millions worldwide. Nexo’s all-in-one platform combines advanced technology with a client-first approach, offering high-yield flexible and fixed-term savings, crypto-backed loans, sophisticated trading tools, and the world's first dual-mode crypto credit-and-debit card. Built on deep industry expertise, a sustainable business model, robust infrastructure, stringent security, and global licensing, Nexo champions innovation and long-lasting prosperity.
Official website: nexo.com
Media contact
Nexo Communications Team — [email protected]
In this patch of your weekly Dispatch:Crypto clarity gets priced inEthereum's next chapter beginsStablecoins hit a record highMarket cast
BTC action turns constructive?Bitcoin's weekly chart is showing early signs of stabilization. Price bounced off the lower Bollinger Band – a volatility indicator, and is now hovering around the 200-period SMA, a key long-term trend indicator. The RSI, a momentum oscillator, sits at very low levels, on the verge of oversold, while the Stochastic, another momentum oscillator, is turning up from oversold territory – hinting that bearish momentum may be starting to fade. The MACD histogram, a trend and momentum indicator, is hovering near the zero line, leaving the broader trend without a clear tilt just yet.
The daily chart tells a more constructive story. Price bounced off the lower Bollinger Band, crossed above the 20-period SMA, and is now heading toward the upper Bollinger Band. The Stochastic lines have moved into overbought territory while RSI sits neutral, and the MACD histogram is deep in positive territory – all pointing to stronger near-term momentum than the weekly picture alone would suggest.
Key levels to watch: On the downside, immediate support sits around $61,000, with the next significant zone near $58,000–$59,000. To the upside, the first resistance comes in around $64,000, followed by $67,000.
The big idea
Regulatory clarity is leading the wayFor most of the past years, crypto traded under a cloud of overlapping unclarity — nobody quite knew where US rates were headed, how the EU would actually enforce the MiCA rulebook, or whether Washington would ever agree on a framework of its own. That fog is lifting gradually, and it's happening on multiple fronts at once.
US: Start with the Fed. Kevin Warsh's first meeting as chair on June 17 came with a shorter, blunter statement and a dot plot showing nine of eighteen officials projecting a hike before year-end — a sharp shift from March's median forecast of a cut. Warsh himself submitted no dot, but the tone was unmistakably hawkish, and futures markets moved with it: traders are now pricing a quarter-point hike as the base case by October. This Wednesday's FOMC minutes are the first real test of how much of that hawkishness holds once the room isn't watching, and June's CPI print on July 14 will matter more than anything said in a press conference. By the July 28–29 decision, markets will know which read was right. The gap to watch: the dot plot moved before the data did, and markets have already followed the dot plot — if inflation cools even modestly between now and the CPI print, that repricing could just as easily reverse.
Europe already has its answer. Since MiCA’s grandfathering period ended on July 1, regulatory clarity has shifted from a policy debate to an economic variable. Authorization now determines who can scale across the EEA, serve, and build durable distribution. With only an estimated 17–20% of the roughly 1,200 previously registered firms making the transition, regulatory approval has become one of the sector’s scarcest assets.
The bar was deliberately high, and the firms that cleared it did the work. As regulatory uncertainty recedes, markets are beginning to recognize that discipline has value. Businesses operating within a predictable legal framework benefit from lower risk premiums, stronger investor confidence, and greater strategic flexibility. In Europe, compliance is no longer simply the cost of doing business—it is becoming a source of competitive advantage and long-term enterprise value.
The US isn't quite there yet, but it's closer than it's ever been. The CLARITY Act cleared the Senate Banking Committee in May, sits on the Senate calendar, and missed its symbolic July 4 target — a timing slip, not a stall. Lawmakers are now eyeing late July or early August, against a shrinking window before recess and midterm politics take over. If it lands, it does for US jurisdiction what MiCA just did for the European Economic Area.
Where does this leave the market? Two of the industry's largest markets– the US and the EU – are moving from "if" to "when" on their regulations within the same year — but the convergence isn't the real story. What matters is that clarity doesn't reward the sector evenly; it rewards preparation and effort. Clarity is becoming the foundation that decides who gets to build in the space.
Ethereum
Ethereum outperforms as its next chapter comes into focusETH was one of the better performers recently, up over to roughly $1,770 at the start of the week, as Bitcoin held firm above $63,000. That put it ahead of most majors, and it came despite wobbly AI stocks and a stronger dollar – two things that usually drag crypto down with them. Ethereum didn't just hold up; it led the pack.
The timing is fitting. Vitalik Buterin just dropped his vision for "Lean Ethereum", a multi-year rebuild he's calling the network's third major era – right up there with the Merge. The headline: a data storage redesign that could slash fees for everyday tokens and apps by 10x or more, no rewrites required. Quantum resistance and privacy are also getting fast-tracked as core priorities, not afterthoughts. Put together, it's a good reminder that Ethereum's momentum isn't only about price – there's real groundwork being laid for the next decade.
TradFi trends
SpaceX joins the Nasdaq-100SpaceX enters the Nasdaq-100 before Tuesday's open, just weeks after its June 12 IPO valued the company near $2 trillion. The stock has since dropped roughly 29% from its all-time high, closing Monday at $160.42.
Funds that automatically track the Nasdaq-100 now have to buy SpaceX shares to keep matching the index – but JPMorgan expects that buying to be modest, since SpaceX only makes up about 1.3% of it, ranking around 21st behind names like Nvidia and Tesla. Meanwhile, early investors and employees start becoming free to sell over the next few months, which could offset much of that buying, with Musk's own stake locked up for a year.
Macroeconomic roundup
Fed minutes, gold dips, and a sliding yenThe big date this week is Wednesday, July 8 – FOMC minutes from last month's meeting. It's the first real window into how new Fed voices are thinking, and whether the hawkish rate outlook still holds up after a soft jobs report. Weekly jobless claims land the next day and could add more fuel either way. Markets are watching closely for any signal on where rates head next.
Elsewhere, JPMorgan just got more cautious on gold, slashing its Q4 2026 target by 25% to $4,500 (from $6,000), citing softer near-term demand – though it's still bullish long-term on central bank buying. And the yen keeps sliding: Goldman Sachs now sees it weakening to 165 per dollar within a year, one of the gloomier calls on Wall Street, as the currency sits at its weakest since 1986.
The week's most interesting data story
Bitcoin buyers are coming backAfter several months of net distribution, Bitcoin's Accumulation Trend Score has shifted meaningfully higher over the past month, with buying activity becoming increasingly broad-based across the investor spectrum. Smaller holders (under 1 BTC) and mid-size wallets (100–1,000 BTC) are showing the strongest accumulation, both nearing peak trend scores. Larger cohorts, including 1,000–10,000 BTC wallets, have also turned net buyers, though with less intensity than earlier in the cycle.
This synchronized improvement across multiple investor groups suggests confidence is gradually rebuilding, with participants increasingly willing to absorb supply near current levels, according to Glassnode analysts. Periods of broad-based accumulation like this have historically provided a constructive foundation for longer-term recoveries, though sustained buying will be key to confirming the trend.
The numbers
The week’s most interesting numbers$265 million — U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs' largest inflow in over a month on Monday, following July 2's break from an outflow streak.
33x — Upside Standard Chartered sees in Morpho by 2030, with a fresh $60 price target.
$1.79 trillion — Record stablecoin transaction volume in June, up 63% from May and 125% year-over-year.
$150,000 – Bernstein's year-end bitcoin price target, held despite the current 54% drawdown from October's peak.
Hot topic
What the community is discussingA BTC signal from the options markets?
The corporate ETH strategy continues?
The HODLers’ mindset.
Dispatch is a weekly publication by Nexo, designed to help you navigate and take action in the evolving world of digital assets. To share your Dispatch suggestions and comments, email us at [email protected].
Today, we are announcing a new milestone in our journey in Argentina: Andrés Ondarra will be taking the reins as our General Manager for Argentina, reinforcing our commitment to this strategic market for the development of digital asset solutions.
In his new role, Andrés will lead local operations with a focus on strengthening client trust, supporting the responsible adoption of crypto tools, and consolidating our value proposition in the country. He brings more than two decades of experience at the intersection of traditional finance, fintech, and crypto in Latin America, leading regional operations in the digital assets sector. With his previous experience in investment banking on Wall Street and deep knowledge of the Argentine market, Andrés has a strong understanding of the regulatory environment and the ability to scale financial platforms in dynamic and highly competitive contexts.
Argentina is a market with enormous potential for the evolution of digital assets. Taking on this role at Nexo represents a great opportunity to continue building trust, bringing valuable solutions closer to clients, and contributing to the development of a stronger, more inclusive ecosystem. I strongly believe in the impact that fintech and blockchain can have across the region, and I am very excited to join a global team that combines innovation, experience, and a clear service-oriented mindset.
Andrés Ondarra, our new General Manager for Argentina.Handing over the role of General Manager for Nexo Argentina is Federico Ogue, who was instrumental in supporting Nexo’s evolution and presence in Argentina so far. Federico’s role at Nexo will be gradually handed over to Andrés over a one-month smooth transition period, before he moves on to his next project.
Argentina has one of the most sophisticated crypto and fintech ecosystems in the region, and the work we've done here is something to be proud of. The decision to step down comes from my desire to pursue a new entrepreneurial chapter. I look forward to passing on the baton to Andrés, who brings exactly the experience and vision needed to lead Nexo's next stage of growth in Argentina.
Federico OgueWe are extremely grateful to Federico Ogue for what he helped us accomplish so far, and we look forward to seeing Andrés apply his experience, market knowledge, and vision to build on our offering in Argentina and the broader LATAM region.
The ALGO price is sitting at a crossroads. On one side, the daily chart continues flashing warning signs as sellers defend key resistance levels. On the other, Algorand’s network fundamentals are quietly improving, which is creating a disconnect that crypto markets have seen more than once.
Right now, price action is telling one story, while on-chain data is telling another.
Falling Wedge Keeps Bears In ControlTechnically, ALGO price remains trapped inside a long-term falling wedge, repeatedly failing to reclaim the 20day EMA. That persistent bleeding keeps short-term momentum tilted toward the downside.
If selling pressure strengthens and ALGO slips below the $0.0801 support level, the next major downside target sits nears $0.0503. That level is especially important because it aligns with the lower boundary of the falling wedge, which has historically active in 2025 and now in 2026 shows a potential reversal zone if buying demand returns.
However, still the bigger hurdle is still the 200-day EMA. Until ALGO price decisively breaks and closes above that long-term indicator, any recovery attempt risks remaining just another bounce inside a broader downtrend.
Algorand Network Fundamentals Tell A Different StoryALGO price weakness hasn’t been matched by network deterioration. As per the Chainspect Nakamoto Coefficient rankings, Algorand currently ranks as the fourth most decentralized blockchain. The network also operated with 1542 active validators, more than double Solana’ reported 707 validators, highlighting a broader validator distribution.
That decentralization mark isn’t the only good point in Algorand, but it has been accompanied by improving activity across the network.
Algorand Transaction Activity Shows Fresh RecoveryPer the data, Algorand processed nearly 1 million daily transactions during the past 90 days before activity dropped below 500K near the end of June.
Since then, daily transactions have recovered to above 800K, suggesting use engagement has rebounded despite ongoing technical weakness.
For now, the ALGO price remains under pressure, but strengthening decentralization and recovering network activity provide a notable fundamental backdrop. Whether buyers can defend the $0.0801 support or eventually reclaim the 200-day EMA band may determine which narrative wins.
Story Ends Here
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Validator Economics Tightened Under Referenda 1909@Polkadot has activated two governance referenda that mark one of the most significant overhauls of its staking architecture in recent years. The proposals were first introduced on June 23 and approved on July 6, 2026.
Referendum 1909 builds on the previously approved 10,000 $DOT minimum self-stake requirement, adding self-stake rewards, 0% commission, and permissionless chilling for under-bonded validators. This addresses a potential security problem: if a critical number of validators do not have sufficient capital at stake, the security model weakens.
Under the updated reward structure, 22.6% of the Dynamic Allocation Program's budget will be earmarked for validator self-stake incentives, while 45.2% will go toward staker rewards, with a concave weighting model applied to prevent large validators from disproportionately dominating the reward pool.
The chill threshold has been lowered to 32%, enabling permissionless chilling of validators whose self-stake falls below the minimum bond, while a safety floor ensures the active validator set cannot be reduced below a safe minimum through this mechanism. Supporters argue this model better aligns validator interests with overall network health, though critics caution that smaller validators could struggle to remain competitive.
Nominator Liquidity Improves Sharply Under Referendum 1910Referendum 1910 removes nominator slashing and shortens the nominator unbonding period from roughly 28 days to about 48 hours, making staking considerably more flexible. Currently, nominators can face losses if they back validators that violate network rules. By eliminating nominator slashing, Polkadot aims to make staking more accessible and less risky for retail participants, while placing greater responsibility on validators to maintain network security.
Today, Polkadot's unbonding period sits at about 28 days, and official guides warn users they must wait nearly a month before withdrawn $DOT becomes transferable. The new design targets unbonding times of roughly 24 to 48 hours, pushing staking liquidity closer to what traders expect in modern DeFi.
The upgrades went live alongside a roughly 12% price increase in $DOT between July 1 and July 6, though on-chain activity remains thin, suggesting the market may be pricing in the improvements ahead of tangible usage growth.
Sources:
Polkadot SubSquare: Referenda 1909 Official Details
Coinpedia: Major Staking Upgrades Live on Polkadot
The Crypto Times: Polkadot Targets Faster Staking Exits
Not financial or tax advice. PANews content is strictly educational and informational and is not investment advice, financial advice, tax advice, legal advice, or a solicitation to buy or sell any digital asset, security, or financial product. Do your own research and consult qualified advisers.
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Practical Hedera workflows from the terminal Hiero CLI is a command-line tool for developers working with the Hedera and Hiero ecosystems. Its purpose is not only to expose individual commands, but also make common Hedera workflows easier to run, repeat, test, and automate from the terminal.
The CLI can be installed globally with npm or Homebrew and used through the hcli command. It’s a tool for interacting with Hedera network, supporting actions such as creating accounts, sending transactions, managing fungible and non-fungible tokens, and working with mainnet, testnet, previewnet, and localnet environments.
The most useful way to think about Hiero CLI is this: Hiero CLI helps developers perform common Hedera operations quickly and consistently without writing one-off SDK scripts for every account, token, contract, network, or transaction workflow.
This document focuses only on the most important capabilities that are already described in the public repository, plugin documentation, or observable CLI examples.
1. Network and operator setup One of the strongest practical use cases for Hiero CLI is working across different Hedera environments. Developers often need to switch between mainnet, testnet, previewnet and localnet depending on whether they are building a proof of concept, preparing a demo, testing locally, or running real network operations.
Developers can set a default network, configure an operator for a specific network, or use the global –network / -N flag to run a single command against a different network without changing the default configuration.
Example:
hcli network use --global testnet hcli hbar transfer --amount 1 --to 0.0.789012 --network mainnet This is useful for teams that mostly work on testnet or localnet, but occasionally need to run specific commands against another environment. It also reduces the risk of constantly editing configuration files or maintaining separate scripts for each network.
1.1 Secure key and credential handling Because many CLI operations require signing transactions, secure handling of private keys is an important part of the developer workflow. Hiero CLI supports key references stored in its local credential system. These references use the kr_xxx format and can be used in commands instead of passing inline accountId:privateKey pairs every time.
This is useful because developers can configure credentials once and then reuse stored references across workflows. It also reduces the need to paste private keys directly into shell commands, scripts, or shared documentation.
Hiero CLI also exposes configuration for the default key manager, including local and local_encrypted options. For real workflows, teams should prefer stored credential references and avoid exposing private keys in terminal history, CI logs, or copied command examples.
2. Account, HBAR, and token workflows Many Hedera workflows start with accounts and basic transfers. Hiero CLI provides commands for creating, importing, listing, viewing, deleting, and checking the balance of accounts. It also supports HBAR transfers.
Example:
hcli account create --balance 10 --name alice hcli account balance --account alice hcli hbar transfer --to 0.0.123456 --amount 1 This is especially useful for preparing demos, integration tests, or proof-of-concept environments. Instead of writing a custom SDK script to create accounts, fund them, and check balances, a developer can run the required operations directly from the terminal.
Hiero CLI is also useful for token lifecycle workflows. The Token Plugin supports operations for fungible tokens and non-fungible tokens, including token creation, association, minting, and transfers.
Example fungible token flow:
hcli token create-ft \ --name demo-token \ --token-name "Demo Token" \ --symbol "DMT" \ --treasury alice \ --decimals 2 \ --initial-supply 1000 \ --supply-type FINITE \ --max-supply 10000 hcli token associate --token demo-token --account bob hcli token transfer-ft \ --token demo-token \ --from alice \ --to bob \ --amount 100 This kind of workflow is a strong fit for Hiero CLI because it represents a real developer need: creating a token, associating it with another account, transferring it, and verifying that the result is correct. These steps are common in testing, demos, tutorials, and early product development.
The CLI also returns readable command output, including values such as token IDs, transaction IDs, network information, and success status. This makes the tool useful not only for execution, but also for documentation and demo scenarios where the result needs to be clearly shown.
3. Smart contracts, batch transactions, and scheduled transactions Hiero CLI also supports more advanced workflows, including smart contract deployment, batch transactions, and scheduled transactions.
For smart contracts, the simplest path is to use one of the built-in default contract templates. This allows a user to deploy a sample contract without preparing a Solidity file or setting up a separate contract project.
For example, a developer can deploy a built-in ERC-20 contract template like this:
hcli contract create --name my-token --default erc20 Or deploy a built-in ERC-721 contract template like this:
hcli contract create --name my-nft --default erc721 After deployment, Hiero CLI can also interact with standard ERC-20 and ERC-721 contract functions exposed by those specifications. For ERC-20 contracts, this includes common calls such as name, symbol, decimals, totalSupply, balanceOf, allowance, transfer, transferFrom, and approve. For ERC-721 contracts, this includes functions such as name, symbol, balanceOf, ownerOf, tokenURI, getApproved, isApprovedForAll, approve, setApprovalForAll, transferFrom, and safeTransferFrom.
This makes the contract workflow easier to demonstrate, especially for first-time users. After the CLI is configured and the operator account has enough funds, the user can deploy a sample contract with a short command. For more advanced use cases, Hiero CLI can also deploy and verify a custom Solidity file, but the built-in templates are the better starting point for a short introductory workflow.
Hiero CLI also works with batch transactions for documented commands. A batch can group supported operations and execute them together as an atomic transaction.
Example:
hcli batch create --name token-demo-batch --key alice hcli token associate --token token-a --account bob --batch token-demo-batch hcli batch execute --name token-demo-batch Scheduled transactions are supported as well. They are useful when a supported transaction should be created first and then signed, verified, or completed later.
The key point is that these features should be described accurately: not every command can be batched or scheduled, but Hiero CLI enables these workflows for specific documented commands.
4. Plugin-based architecture Hiero CLI is built around a plugin architecture. The public repository describes default plugins for areas such as accounts, tokens, networks, HBAR, credentials, topics, configuration, contracts, ERC-20, ERC-721, swaps, batches, and schedules.
This matters because Hiero CLI is not only a fixed set of commands. It is also designed as an extensible framework for organizing Hedera-related command-line functionality.
The plugin architecture helps keep functionality consistent across the CLI. Instead of every new feature becoming a separate script with its own conventions, plugins can use shared services for network configuration, state management, output formatting, logging, account operations, token operations, transaction execution, and other core capabilities.
For developers and maintainers, this is one of the most important long-term strengths of Hiero CLI. It gives the ecosystem a structured way to add new command-line capabilities (new plugins) while keeping the developer experience consistent.
Another important advantage is that developers are not limited to the default plugin set. Hiero CLI can be extended with community plugins created as separate projects. A team can build a custom plugin with its own commands, business logic, and state, and then register it in the CLI through the plugin-management plugin.
For example, a custom plugin can be added from a local project path:
hcli plugin-management add --path /path/to/my-custom-plugin This makes Hiero CLI useful not only as a ready-made developer tool, but also as a foundation for ecosystem-specific automation and custom workflows.
5. AI-agent ready workflows and skills Hiero CLI is also prepared for AI-assisted developer workflows. The repository includes structured skill files that describe how agents should use the CLI, including command syntax, global flags, plugin references, common workflows, and recovery steps for common errors.
This matters because an AI agent can use those skill definitions to understand how to run hcli commands more safely and consistently instead of guessing command names or options. The same idea also applies to extensibility: the repository includes a dedicated skill for scaffolding community plugins, which helps agents guide developers through creating a standalone plugin project.
In practice, this makes Hiero CLI easier to use in agent-assisted environments, where the agent can help configure networks, create accounts, deploy contracts, run token workflows, or scaffold new plugins based on documented CLI behavior.
6. How Hiero CLI compares to other blockchain CLIs Many blockchain ecosystems have their own command-line tools. Solana has its own CLI for wallet, configuration, transfer, and cluster workflows. Ethereum developers often use tools such as Hardhat or Foundry for smart contract development, testing, deployment, and EVM interaction.
Hiero CLI should not be described as a generic replacement for those tools. Its value is more specific. It packages Hedera and Hiero workflows into a single terminal-based tool.
That is where Hiero CLI is strongest: not as a universal blockchain CLI, but as a practical developer tool for working with Hedera workflows consistently from the terminal.
Uniswap just plugged Sky Ecosystem’s LitePSM directly into its routing engine, which means traders swapping between stablecoins like USDS, DAI, and USDC can now do so with zero slippage.
The integration is the latest piece of the “Stablecoin FX Layer” initiative, a collaboration between Spark, Uniswap, and Sky Ecosystem that launched in June 2026 with a clear goal: make stablecoin trading on-chain work more like traditional FX markets, where large swaps between pegged assets don’t move the price.
How LitePSM actually works Think of LitePSM as a vending machine for stablecoins. Instead of matching buyers and sellers in a liquidity pool, it maintains pre-minted pools of tokens that can be swapped at fixed rates. You put in USDS, you get USDC. No curve, no slippage, no drama.
In more technical terms, LitePSM is a gas-optimized evolution of MakerDAO’s original Peg Stability Module. The key innovation is that it bypasses direct interactions with the Vat, MakerDAO’s core accounting engine, which makes transactions cheaper and faster. Governance-set parameters like buf, tin, and tout control the module’s operations, regulating buffer sizes and fee structures.
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The module had already proven itself through integrations with other DeFi aggregators. CoW Swap, Paraswap, and Kyber were all routing trades through LitePSM before Uniswap came on board.
As part of the rollout, Spark migrated approximately $150 million in USDS liquidity to Uniswap v4 pools on June 25, 2026. This effectively establishes USDS as a central quoting asset for multi-issuer stablecoin trades, including pairs with USDT and PYUSD.
The numbers behind the expansion USDS circulation currently sits at approximately $10.3 billion. Sky’s governance has proposed doubling the USDC buffer for LitePSM from $400 million to $800 million.
That buffer is the war chest of USDC that LitePSM holds to facilitate instant swaps. When someone wants to convert USDS to USDC, the module draws from this buffer. Doubling it signals that demand for these swaps is outpacing the current infrastructure’s capacity.
The $150 million liquidity migration to Uniswap v4 positions USDS not just as another stablecoin competing for market share, but as a routing hub. When Uniswap’s algorithm looks for the best path to execute a trade between, say, USDT and PYUSD, it can now route through USDS via LitePSM, potentially offering better execution than traditional AMM pools.
What this means for traders and the broader market For regular users, the benefit is straightforward. Swapping between major stablecoins on Uniswap just got cheaper and more predictable. The routing engine will automatically detect when LitePSM offers a better rate than traditional pools and send the trade accordingly.
For larger players, institutional desks, DAOs managing treasuries, protocols rebalancing reserves, zero-slippage execution on stablecoin pairs at scale removes one of the persistent friction points that has kept some institutional volume on centralized exchanges.
The proposed buffer increase from $400 million to $800 million represents a significant capital commitment. At $10.3 billion in current circulation, the buffer would represent roughly 7.8% of outstanding USDS.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Uniswap has integrated a new routing infrastructure that connects transactions involving DAI, USDS and USDC directly to Sky’s LitePeg stability module. Thanks to this update, the platform now allows users to swap between these three stablecoins at a precise 1:1 parity. The move is designed to reduce slippage in transactions and lessen reliance on external market makers.
New routing mechanism goes liveLitePeg serves as a mechanism that ensures transitions among DAI, USDS and USDC are automatically executed at parity. By leveraging this system in transaction steps involving these stablecoins, Uniswap can minimize price impact and tap into deeper liquidity pools. This advancement enables direct access to millions of dollars worth of reserves held in Sky’s system.
Mini glossary: LitePeg is a liquidity and balancing mechanism designed to execute swaps between select stablecoin pairs at a fixed rate. Sky, formerly known as Maker, continues to issue DAI and USDS under its new brand.
The integration involved Uniswap Labs, the Uniswap DAO and Sky. Notably, no new smart contract was deployed for this change. Instead, the update was implemented through a revision of routing logic on the UniswapX layer, affecting how transactions are handled by the router.
With routing now handled by LitePeg, each transaction step involving DAI, USDS or USDC on Uniswap can complete at parity, according to information provided by the project team.
Aim: Minimizing price impact in stablecoin transactionsA significant share of DeFi trading volume comes from stablecoin pairs. Executing these trades at direct parity could help investors avoid unwanted price impact and reduce the risk of MEV (maximal extractable value) exploitation. For developers, this shift is crucial for standardizing stablecoin liquidity across Ethereum and prominent layer-2 networks.
Sky’s Peg Stability Module reportedly provides hundreds of millions of dollars in liquidity depth, helping to limit transaction costs on Uniswap. This structure could prove particularly advantageous for aggregator platforms and institutional traders seeking more efficient trading paths.
Sky’s Peg Stability Module enables transitions between DAI, USDS and USDC with substantial depth, ensuring trades are completed with minimal price drift, the company stated.
Wider implications for Sky and the DeFi ecosystemFor Sky, the integration means DAI and USDS are no longer confined to lending activities; they now play an active role in decentralized exchange flows. This reveals a trend among some protocols to retain stablecoin liquidity internally rather than outsourcing it to external providers.
Looking ahead, the industry will be watching to see whether similar models are adopted by other decentralized exchanges. Additional topics under consideration include expanding asset support, enabling cross-chain routing, and how regulators will approach such stability modules in the future.
Disclaimer: The information contained in this article does not constitute investment advice. Investors should be aware that cryptocurrencies carry high volatility and therefore risk, and should conduct their own research.
@Dfinity's Internet Computer protocol ($ICP) reached a new weekly activity peak on Tuesday after processing more than 98.3 million transactions in a single day, according to data tracked by @ChainspectApp. The figure marks a record for the network and adds to a string of throughput milestones logged by the protocol in 2026.
Sustained Throughput, Not Just a One-Day Spike The record daily figure sits within a broader pattern of rising on-chain activity. The Internet Computer network recently sustained over 1,089 transactions per second for a continuous 24-hour period, with peaks reaching 1,300 TPS, demonstrating an ability to maintain enterprise-grade throughput rather than achieve short-lived peaks. According to ChainSpect's real-time tracker, Internet Computer has averaged 2,554 transactions per second over a recent week, more than double Solana's 1,153.
Over the past 180 days, Internet Computer processed approximately 75.7 billion transactions, with daily counts rising from roughly 300 to 350 million at the start of that period to peaks approaching 750 to 800 million in May. Even after that spike, the network has consistently maintained daily activity well above earlier levels, indicating that usage remains elevated rather than being a one-off event.
Developer Migration Driving On-Chain Demand @ChainspectApp metrics confirm that $ICP is sustaining record-level throughput as developers migrate complex workloads to on-chain environments. The protocol's architecture is designed to accommodate that shift. Dfinity uses a subnet-based architecture to scale horizontally, enabling multiple subnets to process tasks in parallel, making its performance closer to that of distributed cloud services. Internet Computer uses a reverse gas model where developers pre-pay computation costs in cycles burned from ICP tokens.
Recent infrastructure upgrades have also expanded the network's capacity. The DFINITY Foundation rolled out a major upgrade that doubled storage capacity across all 47 subnets, allowing applications to handle larger workloads and bringing total Internet Computer capacity to 94 TiB, with each subnet now supporting 2 TiB of replicated state. GitHub commits saw growth of 37% month over month in Q4 2025 and Q1 2026 as developers gained confidence in the improved infrastructure.
The throughput record arrives alongside activity on the DeFi front. A public rollout of MULTI/DEX is currently underway, where participants use dummy assets to stress-test the protocol's architecture, replicating the speed and liquidity of centralized exchanges, with the outcome to be submitted to the Network Nervous System for a vote on permanent, autonomous execution. A successful launch would demonstrate that ownerless, on-chain DeFi can rival centralized exchange performance, potentially attracting significant liquidity and boosting the network's DeFi TVL, which has grown to over $250 million in 2026.
Sources
BanklessTimes: Internet Computer ICP Tests Key Resistance After 11% Move
CoinMarketCap: Latest Internet Computer News and Network Updates
Internet Computer Dashboard (Official Network Stats)
Solana News: The Solana Foundation has appointed Michael Coates, Twitter’s first-ever Chief Information Security Officer and a veteran of Mozilla and enterprise SaaS security, as its new CISO, a hire that signals the Foundation is treating security as a boardroom priority rather than an engineering footnote.
Coates announced the move on X on July 7, 2026, describing it as a new chapter driven by his longstanding draw to fast-moving new frontiers.
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Solana News: Why Coates Chose Solana The draw, according to Coates, was scale. He cited Solana’s tens of billions of dollars in daily stablecoin volume and its position processing more transactions each day than most of the cryptocurrency industry combined as the deciding factors.
He also pointed to the launch of SpaceX tokenized shares on Solana on the same day the asset debuted on Nasdaq, a data point that illustrates how quickly real-world financial activity is migrating to the network.
Big Update for me – a new chapter and I'm now CISO of @SolanaFndn .
I've always been drawn to fast moving new frontiers. Head of Security of Mozilla during the height of the browser wars, the first CISO of Twitter as they burst onto the world's stage, and even as a startup… pic.twitter.com/nrxtpxIKqZ
— Michael Coates (@_mwc) July 7, 2026
That activity has been building steadily. According to 99Bitcoins, Solana’s decentralized application revenue has reportedly grown for nine consecutive quarters, giving institutional participants and builders an increasingly compelling case for committing infrastructure to the chain.
Coates is walking into a network already operating at significant financial and transactional scale, which is precisely why the security role carries real weight.
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A Resume Built for This Moment Coates’s background is unusually well-matched to the crypto security challenge. He served as Head of Security at Mozilla during the browser competition era, then became Twitter’s inaugural CISO as the platform scaled to hundreds of millions of users, building the security function from scratch against organized cybercrime and nation-state adversaries.
He later founded Altitude Networks, a cloud data security startup focused on SaaS document theft prevention, which was acquired by CoinList. That acquisition brought Coates into the crypto sector directly, where he gained experience with crypto infrastructure before his move to Solana.
He also testified before Congress earlier this year on AI and cybersecurity, covering both the offensive risks that AI poses to digital security and the defensive potential of AI capabilities when used effectively, as he noted in his remarks. Both sides of that equation are directly relevant to his new role.
What He Will Actually Do At the Solana Foundation, Coates said his remit spans three areas: strengthening operational security across the network, improving application security practices for builders, and engaging with policymakers and standards bodies on cybersecurity regulation affecting the crypto sector. He described the current threat environment plainly – attackers remain heavily motivated to steal digital assets, and malicious uses of artificial intelligence are becoming an increasing concern.
The governance infrastructure Coates will help protect has grown more sophisticated in recent months. Solana’s on-chain governance framework reportedly includes staker override mechanisms that give token holders a direct check on validator behavior, the kind of decentralized coordination system that requires hardened operational security to function as designed.
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Alex Ioannou
On-Chain Journalist
Alex is a seasoned cryptocurrency trader and market analyst with over seven years of active experience in the digital asset space. Since entering the markets in 2017, Alex has specialized in identifying emerging "meta" trends and high-volatility narratives. Notably, Alex... Read More
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Last week, approximately $40 million in assets were transferred to the Solana blockchain from other chains, as reported by SolanaFloor. This development highlights a growing trend of cross-chain inflows into Solana amid a broader movement of liquidity toward the network. Solana has seen nearly $500 million in bridged assets this month, with a significant portion originating from Ethereum. These inflows suggest a sustained interest in Solana’s DeFi and stablecoin ecosystem, which has been gaining traction for its high-performance capabilities.
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Key Takeaways Recent asset inflows into Solana appear to be consistent with increased interest in its blockchain ecosystem. Market pricing suggests this movement could moderately boost the probability of Solana reaching the $90 target in July. The steady migration of liquidity to Solana may indicate ongoing confidence in its DeFi and stablecoin infrastructure. What to Watch Watch for any further increases in asset inflows to Solana, as continued growth could reinforce the current pricing outlook. Key indicators include potential announcements regarding new financial products on Solana or significant upgrades to the network’s capacity. Developments in these areas could be supportive of scenarios where Solana achieves higher price targets in the coming weeks.
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Contract Odds Δ since publish Volume 24h August 1 2026 31% — — View market → August 1 2026 0.9% — — View market → August 1 2026 0.1% — — View market → August 1 2026 3.8% — — View market → August 1 2026 1.8% — — View market → August 1 2026 0.9% — — View market → August 1 2026 10% — — View market → August 1 2026 1% — — View market → August 1 2026 17% — — View market → August 1 2026 0.2% — — View market → August 1 2026 3.2% — — View market → August 1 2026 0.1% — — View market →
